Mass Effect 2: The Edge of the Void
by almost.bella1030
Summary: After two years, Garrus is reunited with Shepard to take on the Collectors. Despite the impossible odds, both of them plan to see this to the end. Takes place in ME2, mostly Garrus POV. Rated for violence, language, and suggestive themes. Please review!
1. Chapter 1

One

Garrus Vakarian blinked into his scope, trying to keep his eyes open. Fighting the fatigue was almost worse than fighting the mercs, because at least the latter eventually stopped coming over that damned bridge... well, at least there seemed to be less of them, for a little while. The break in their siege made Garrus nervous. He could only guess at what they were up to when they weren't throwing themselves at his defenses. _Bastards are actually teaming up against me. Maybe they've grown brains after all._

Speculating at the plans of his enemies only distracted Garrus for so long. He began to lose his focus once again as his vision became a blur of the soft blue light from his visor and the gray shadows of the bridge. _Where did everything go so wrong? _His whole team was dead, and Sidonis, the backstabbing, self-serving snake was long gone. Garrus shuddered inwardly, the feelings of despair taking on physical form, more painful than the deep ache that had penetrated through him over the last few hours. How long had he been crouched on the balcony, sniping for all he was worth? Had the hours stretched into days yet?

He set his rifle next to him. The mercs were taking a rest (some for eternity), so Garrus would too. He rolled his shoulders, trying to get rid of the stiffness that hadn't left him for two years. As they often did, his thoughts shifted from his current predicament to Shepard. Memories of the Normandy in flames came back to him, the images as sharp as ever. The alarms going off, the panic... Alenko shouting at him to get everyone on to the shuttles. _I should've gone after her. _He began arguing with himself, cycling through the same dialogue in his head, just like he did every time. He stopped after a few minutes, though, too exhausted to continue beating himself up. Besides, what would Shepard say if she could see him wallowing? The best thing he could do was keep focused so he could live to fight, or wallow, another day. A little reluctantly, he grabbed his sniper rifle and put his eye to the scope, ready for more target practice.

He didn't have to wait long for more mercs to appear. A group of hapless freelancers came over the barrier at the far end of the bridge, their motley armor setting them apart from the real killers. He almost felt bad for them as he pulled the trigger, easily taking out the closest one. The round pierced his shoulder, red spray marring his otherwise pristine chest plate. Probably never been used before. They were just confused kids, their youth corrupted by the ugly urban hellhole that was Omega. But... a gun for hire was still a merc, and if they were trying to kill him, he'd try to kill them right back. The only difference was that he actually knew how to use a gun.

Obviously inexperienced, the other freelancers jumped in surprise at the resounding boom of Garrus's Widow rifle. He barely had to shift his aim to hit two more with headshots. _Perfect._ He started to target the stragglers when he realized they were fighting amongst themselves. _Fools. They probably think they'll get a bigger cut if less of them survive._ Maybe they'd save him some ammo. Thermal clips didn't just fall out of the sky.

Still, he watched the skirmish with curiousity, guessing at who would be the victor (little did they know their prize would be a heat sink in the skull). He had his money on an aggressive biotic human female. She'd obviously had extensive training, probably years of experience in heavy combat. Blue corona flaring, she flung the others into the ground, sometimes taking the time to hit them again to make sure they were unconscious. _Strange that she's wasting the biotic energy to keep them alive, when she could just spare the bullet to take them down for good._ He watched her progress, taking note of her two companions: another biotic human, this one male, and a salarian with a cool, calculating air. They made quick work of the mercs on the bridge. They approached the entrance of the base, previously unbreached. _Nice of them to save me a few rounds, but they're getting too close. _He centered the crosshairs on the big stripe on top of her helmet, laid a talon on the trigger...

He couldn't pull it. He couldn't place exactly why, but he got the feeling that the human wasn't trying to kill him. _Maybe I shouldn't trust my instincts. I trusted Sidonis, and look at where that got me. _But Garrus's logical side lost the argument. He'd let the strange, merciful mercs live, just until he found out what they were doing. Or until he decided they really were there for the bounty on his head. Whichever came first. Still, he wasn't going to let them waltz in the base. Didn't want the other mercs getting suspicious. He switched to concussive rounds and took the shot at the girl.

_Damn. _At the last second, she moved forward and slightly to the left. Instead of hitting her shoulder, the shot connected with the side of her helmet. She fell back, dead, colliding loudly with the ground. There was no way she wasn't concussed straight into the after life. _Now I'll never discover her intentions. Wait... is she moving? _Indeed she was. By some miracle, the impact hadn't shattered her skull, though the same couldn't be said of her helmet. Slowly, she got to her feet and pulled the useless hunk off from the back.

Garrus Vakarian would recognize her face anywhere. It was that of Dahlia Shepard.

He barely kept himself from shouting her name. He tucked his rifle close to his chest and slid to the ground, hiding in cover. _It can't be her. My mind's playing tricks on me. Stop that, you unreliable thing. _And yet it had to be. He spent the last two years staring at Shepard's face in recruitment ads, at memorials on the Citadel, posted all over the Extranet. Not to mention that treasured holo of the two of them by the Mako, smiling, albeit a little stiffly. He knew what she looked like, and, dammit, that was her he'd just shot. Carefully, he leaned over the edge of the balcony to double check.

She was gone, along with the salarian and the man. His mandibles flared as he scanned the bridge for any hint of their whereabouts. The only sign of their prescence was the unconscious freelancers. _So they've made it into the base. _If it was really Shepard, he was saved. If it wasn't, he was as good as dead.

"Archangel?" a voice came from behind him. He didn't even have to turn around to know it was her. _I'm not crazy_, he thought gleefully. He dealt with the final merc on the bridge before turning around.

She looked exactly the same. Blue eyes, scanning and assessing. Bruise already starting to show against her pale face. Dark hair, slightly longer than she'd usually kept it. Shoulders set, back straight. He'd never really been able to picture her exactly right in his mind, and now there she was. Not dead. He removed his helmet, so they could get a better look at each other.

"Garrus?" she said incredulously. She took a step closer, probably making sure that it was him and not some other devastatingly handsome turian.

He nodded and gave a slight bow. "At your service."

"I can't – I'm so..." she stopped and started. It was amusing to see her speechless. She cleared her throat. "It's good to see you again, Vakarian."

_Hmmm. Why is she being so casual? _After thinking she was dead for two years, Garrus thought some kind of explanation would be nice.

"Quite an understatement." He wanted to demand what happened; ask if she was really dead and why she was faking, or, if not, how the hell she managed to come back to life. But that was not the kind of conversation they could have in a base about to be overrun by mercenaries. First things first: they had to get out alive. " So, I'm going to make a wild assumption and say you came all this way to save my sorry ass?"

"You got it." Shepard nodded, indicating the space behind Garrus's shoulder. "How'd you get yourself into this mess, anyway?"

"Look, we both have a lot of questions," he glanced at the salarian and the male human, who was wearing a suit with an emblem Garrus recognized as Cerberus, "But I highly recommend that we get out of here before half of Omega tries to knock down the front door."

Shepard nodded, always ready for action. "You have an exit route?"

"More or less. The four of us should be able to make it back across the bridge. Storming the merc bases would be disastrous, but – lucky for us – there are maintenance tunnels beneath the buildings. They've served as good escape routes before." He transferred blueprints to her omni-tool, just in case.

Garrus grabbed his rifle and his helmet while Shepard gave directions to her squad... which he was now a part of. It would be good to take orders from her again. Just like old times. Well, except for the gruff Cerberus man and frail-looking salarian that were tagging along. But if they were with Shepard, he supposed he could trust them. For now, anyway.

"Garrus," Shepard said to him, as they were about to leave. She put his hand on his shoulder, gripping it tightly. "I really am glad to see you."

"Me, too." He took a breath to say something else, then stopped. A small red dot appeared at the center of her forehead, like some kind of laser. _Precision sniper._ He didn't bother warning her; just pushed her chest as hard as he could. She flew into the couch behind her, falling onto the cushioned side and causing it to tip over backwards. The shot rang out and Garrus dove. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the salarian and the human spring into action, taking cover behind furniture and drawing their weapons.

"ARCHANGEL!" Garrus poked his head out of cover to find out who wanted to see him so badly. A gunship roared to life, bullets spraying his feeble protection. _Thought I took care of that thing. _He flattened himself onto the ground. In a few seconds, the overturned table he was hiding behind would be shredded into wood chips, and a few seconds after that, so would he. _Time to make a break for it. _

He took his cue from the sound of Shepard launching a powerful biotic warp at the gunship. Her attack wouldn't do much damage to the armor, but it might distract the gunship for a precious second. Rifle slung over his shoulder, Garrus sprinted from his position, exposing himself to the gun fire. _One one thousand, two one thousand. __Almost there..._

Suddenly, everything became illuminated in a brilliant, blinding light, and Garrus felt his world tip over, smashing into the ground. Then, the pain. It was like someone set liquid nitro on fire and poured it down the back of his armor. He heard Shepard yell his name.

His mouth was wet, and the rest of him felt sticky and warm. Her face appeared at the top of the overturned sofa. Apparently it served as better cover than the table. But he could still hear the gunship outside the window. If she left her cover, she'd end up in the exact same position as him.

"Stay there! I'm fine," he tried to tell her. It came out as a low gurgle. _Probably not helping my case. _But he couldn't let Shepard die for him, not when she had reappeared. Then, it dawned on him that he didn't want to die either. A few minutes ago, he'd felt hopeless, that he should just give up... yet that was before Shepard showed up. Now that she was here, that there was the slimmest chance of escape, he couldn't let himself just bleed out on the floor.

Rolling onto his stomach, Garrus pulled himself along the ground. Blood gushed out of his mouth, and probably a few other places, but he didn't stop. He was only a few feet away.

"Cover me!" Shepard ordered to her two companions. They did as they were told, firing at the gunship to get its attention. With some of the heat off her back, she crouched at the side of the sofa and slid it across the floor, putting it between Garrus and the open window. Glass crunched under her boots as she moved, the floor slippery with blue blood. Once they were both somewhat shielded from the hail of bullets, Shepard looked at the open wound, then for something to staunch its flow. She could tear apart the cushioning of the sofa, and with a heavy application of medi-gel, she might get Garrus on his feet.

But none of that was going to happen with that damn gunship breathing down her neck. Hefting the grenade launcher off her back, she glanced down at Garrus. His eyes were open, watching her.

"Just hold on," she said. She swung it over the back of the sofa, took aim, and...

Boom. Boom. Boom. Three consecutive shots, a short pause, then one last BOOM. That was the gunship spiraling out of control, crashing into the side of the building. Target eliminated.

"Watch the entrances," Shepard said, on the off chance that there were any stragglers left in the building. Without wasting time, she gave Garrus a double dose of medi-gel. Still not satisfied, she pulled a knife from her boot and got to work slicing the covers of the sofa into thick strips, tying them off around his shoulder.

"Must really... want me out of here... alive," Garrus managed to splutter out, noting the efficiency and care with which she worked. Gently, like a sheep herder reclaiming a lost lamb, Shepard lifted Garrus onto her shoulders, nodding at her team mates to move out.

"You have no idea."


	2. Chapter 2

Two

When he woke, Garrus didn't remember much, but the few mangled scraps of memories were probably best forgotten anyway. Lots of painful jostling, narrow, dank walkways, views of his own limbs dangling uselessly and... Shepard. Her boots smeared with his own blue blood, stumbling over metal grates, grunting with effort. Then swearing at him not to die, because he owed her big time for schlepping him through a smelly sewer. _Oh, yeah. Good times._

He sat up slowly, almost instantly regretting it. _Feels like I got in a headbutting contest with a krogan. _

"Take it easy, there," a guy told him, the one he saw with Shepard before. "You survived a direct hit from a missile. You'll need more than just a couple of hours of down time." They were in a med bay that gave him an eerie sense of de ja vu. Garrus reached up to touch his neck. He wondered where Shepard was, and why she wasn't there when he woke up.

"No kidding," Garrus said. He didn't want to make small talk with tight-pants Cerberus man. He needed to see Shepard, needed the truth from her. He got to his feet, taking a moment to steady himself.

"Whoa," Cerberus man said, holding his hands up, like he was trying to stop traffic. Garrus waved him off and started making his way to the door, legs wobbling. Keeping one hand on the wall, he ignored the Cerberus man's protests and proceeded to the exit. Just as he reached the door, he came face to face with someone Garrus was sure he'd never see again.

"Good timing, Dr. Chakwas. Vakarian here was trying to make a break for it."

"Thank you for waiting, Jacob." Calm eyes, neat gray hair still in its same short cut. _Funny accent is intact, too. _The familiarity was comforting yet almost too much to bear. He opened his mouth to greet her, but words failed him. "Well, look at you, Garrus!" Throaty laugh. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say we were on the old Normandy chasing down Saren."

"Hi, Doc," he said. A slight nod was the best he could do by way of greeting. "What do you mean, 'old Normandy'?"

Dr. Chakwas sighed, suddenly seeming ancient and weary. "Oh, I'll let the Commander explain. I've had enough excitement for one day." She went to her desk on the opposite side of the med bay and rummaged around in its drawers, drinking heartily from a silver flask.

"Commander Shepard will be down in a minute," Jacob, the Cerberus man, informed him, sensing his befuddlement. Garrus shrugged, then sat down, wondering what was keeping her.

He was about to get up and search for her when the woman herself came through the door, dressed in a Cerberus uniform.

"If you two wouldn't mind..." she began, glancing between Dr. Chakwas and Jacob.

"Of course, Commander," Jacob said, snapping off a crisp salute. _Kiss-ass. _Dr. Chakwas followed him out, a little more slowly. Garrus noticed they both seated themselves in the mess hall, within sight of the medical bay.

"Please, sit," Shepard said, wheeling over the doctor's chair for herself as Garrus sat down on the bed he'd woken up on. "Hell of a reunion, huh?" _Avoiding the fly in the lotion. Or whatever that ridiculous human saying is. _He didn't care about what she was hiding as much as why.

"How about we skip the bull and get right to what the hell happened?" Garrus said, fighting to keep his tone even.

Shepard gave in to him quickly. "Fair enough." She waited for him to ask.

"Why did you leave m-" he stopped. He wasn't there to shout at her or make accusations. "Were you really dead?"

"Yes."

"Then how did you do it?" It went unsaid that he meant coming back to life.

Shepard rubbed her temples, tousling her hair. She took a second to smooth it back. She locked her eyes with his. "The Collectors, Garrus. They're abducting entire human colonies... for the Reapers."

"But what about you?" he pressed. The fate of the galaxy rested on their shoulders, again – no surprise there. That still didn't explain how she cheated death.

A strange smile flashed briefly across her face. She settled back in her chair. "Cerberus funded the project to collect my remains and reconstruct me. From what they told me, it took two years. When I, for lack of a better term, woke up, they told me the situation and let me investigate it for myself." She moved a little closer, wheeling herself in the doctor's luxurious swivel chair. "It's real, Garrus. Everything we uncovered about Sovereign and Saren hasn't gone away, even though I did. The Reapers are still out there, as much as the Council and the Alliance wish they weren't."

"And that's were you come in."

"Where _we _come in. I've been assembling an elite team to take the fight to the Collectors. I need you for this, Garrus," Shepard said, giving him a soft kick in the leg.

He returned the gesture fondly. "Well, whatever they spent on bringing you back was well worth it. If stopping the Reapers is even possible, you're the only one for the job." He straightened a little. "Besides, I may have missed your, uhhh, very fine leadership skills."

"By the looks of it, you kept yourself busy," she replied, smoothly seguing into what Garrus was up to.

"Right." The sharp sting of betrayal was still too fresh, the images of his dead teammates engrained on his eyeballs. "Let's just say I trusted someone I shouldn't have." He stared at his hands, absently wondering where his gloves were. He looked up, startled, when Shepard took hold of his bare digits.

"Hey," she said, in that soft tone that she never used around the crew. "You okay?"

He dipped his head slightly. He'd tell her about it sometime. Just not right away. Unloading that burden on her could wait. "I will be."

In another unprecedented event, Shepard got to her feet and put her arms around Garrus, pressing her face close to his. "I'm here for you," she said simply. Then they remained silent for a while, committing the moment to memory, before she pulled back.

"Enough of that for now. We've got a galaxy to save, remember?" Garrus nodded, standing upright and giving her a professional nod. "C'mon, I'll show you the Normandy two point oh." He followed her out of the med-bay, the pain in his body completely dulled.

Something had changed between them. The days of coexisting as professionals under a common cause were gone. Every day for two years, he'd thought of her, try to move on, and fail. Now that she was back, neither of them could pretend like they were still just soldiers on a mission together. Shepard had become Garrus's best and only friend in that wide, lonely galaxy. And, undoubtedly, she was the best and only hope for civilization in that wide, lonely galaxy.


	3. Chapter 3

Three

Shepard and Garrus didn't get very far into their tour before they met another familiar face. Rather, a familiar mask.

"GARRUS!" he turned around just in time to get bowled over by Tali'Zorah. He cringed when she threw her arms around his still-tender neck. "Keelah, I was worried you wouldn't make it." _Comforting. _

"You know me," Garrus replied, gently and swiftly detaching himself from her iron grip. "I, ahhh, try not to die, mostly." He cleared his throat. "That a new suit?"

"How did you know?" Tali asked. He shrugged. All quarians changed their suits from time to time. "Anyway, it'll be nice to have have someone else we can trust onboard." She paused, glanced over her shoulder, then spoke up loudly, "Because we're on a Cerberus ship!"

A few of the servicemen in the mess began talking animatedly to one another, gravitating away from the three of them. Shepard crossed her arms over her chest, then said, "Tali, be nice," in a warning tone. Then, there was a look on her face that clearly said, _Besides, this is my ship. _Good old Shepard.

"Of course, Shepard. I don't mean any offense," Tali replied. Her head turned slightly, probably listening for the reactions of the crew. They kept to their hushed conversations. "Anyway, I wanted to talk to you about the FBA couplings and reducing the output of -" Shepard held up her hand, stopping the quarian.

"I'm no tech junkie. You call the shots on this one," she told her. Muttering excitedly to herself, Tali left the two of them alone, skipping almost all the way down to engineering. Shepard visibly relaxed once she was gone.

"C'mon, let me show you to the forward battery," she told Garrus. He watched her carefully as they went down a long hallway. He thought that she looked a little tired, then got to wondering if she'd gotten any sleep at all since she carried him off Omega. His guess was no. But she seemed like she could handle it. Just by observing her from a distance on the old Normandy, Garrus was familiar with Shepard's almost inhuman way of dealing with every obstacle life threw at her without batting an eyelash. While scouring the galaxy for a way to stop Saren, they'd encountered all sorts of fun, terrifying people who were always trying to kill them. Add on the pressure from the Alliance of remaining loyal to humanity, the Council questioning her motives at every turn, and the reporters with their invasive interviews... he wasn't sure how she made it through it all. _She's Shepard. Of course she can deal with it. _

But this time around, he felt that things were different. The Alliance associated her with terrorists. The Council wanted nothing to do with her. The whole galaxy, watching and doing nothing. Cerberus at her back, a knife in one hand and a deep, deep wallet in the other. It seemed like she was used to diffusing the tension on the Normany on a regular basis, too. Shepard's resolve seemed as unwavering as ever, but Garrus got the feeling that she needed him more than she'd like him to know.

"Well, here we are," Shepard announced, nodding at the terminal in the main battery and sticking her hands in her pockets. "Not as homey as Omega."

True enough, the only thing he recognized as his own was the Widow sniper rifle he had when Shepard had found him. _Didn't exactly have time to pack. _Though if he did have the time, he wasn't sure what he would bring. Other than his gear, there was nothing he couldn't leave behind. Garrus picked up the rifle and checked the scope, sneaking in a furtive glance at Shepard. "I have all I need right here."

She gave him a soft smile. "We've got a pretty decent armory. I'll make sure Jacob hooks you up with the best."

"Thanks in advance."

She rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand, then exhaled. Her lips parted with the intent to speak, then closed when there was a soft _whoosh_ and the doors opened.

"Thought I saw you come in here, Shep," the intruder, a slight, hooded human female, said. Shepard's shoulders jerked up, coming to attention. "Miranda's turning the ship upside down looking for you. I figured I'd pass along the message."

"What is it now?" she muttered under hear breath, quietly enough that only Garrus could hear. "I appreciate it, Kasumi. Be right up." Kasumi left, and Shepard turned to Garrus.

"We'll have to cut our tour short. Go ahead and get settled," she said, gesturing towards the sparse space.

"I'd like to accompany you," he told her abruptly. A look of mild surprise crossed her face. "If you don't mind, that is."

She started heading out the door. "Good idea. It's about time you made yourself useful around here."

"Miranda" turned out to be the name of a fierce Cerberus agent, wearing a jumpsuit that hugged every perfectly shaped curve of her body. _What is it with these Cerberus types and tight clothes? _

"Shepard," she said, pouncing on her and Garrus as soon as the elevator doors opened. "There's something here that you should see." Miranda led them over to a terminal next to the galaxy map, Garrus doing touble-takes at everything. _It's all here._ All was exactly as it was the day the Normandy was destroyed, save for a few superficial details. He wasn't quite sure what to make of it, though Shepard seemed to have embraced her surroundings without much difficulty. True, she'd had more time to get used to it, and apparently they were all on the same side now, but it was a little strange working with Cerberus, considering the number of agents dead by her doing.

"A distress call has been forwarded to your inbox, directly from the Illusive Man. If it came from him, there must be some connection with the Collectors." Miranda stepped back from the terminal she'd logged into, then clasped her hands behind her back and straightened. "I recommend we immediately -"

"I don't remember giving you clearance to my private messages," Shepard stopped her, cutting her recommendation short. The latter dropped her eyes to the ground for a split second, almost guiltily, before pressing on. Garrus sensed a confrontation coming on. _I wonder if I should warn the girl that she's not going to win this._

"It's only the next system over. We could get there in a few hours." _Here we go. _Shepard took a step closer to her, accentuating the height difference between them by staring the barely shorter woman down. Miranda shrinked back almost imperceptibly.

"Last time, Lawson. Am I clear?" She waited a moment for Miranda to nod her head before examining the terminal. In the few seconds it took her to read the forwarded message, Miranda looked over at Garrus, making eye contact for a moment before tilting her head marginally to the side, as if daring him to comment. He returned the gesture with a shrug, exaggerated by the bulkiness of his armor, then turned his gaze forward. He made a mental note of it. _Beware: belligerent, sticks fingers in other people's pie. Avoid if at all possible. _

"Joker, set a course for the Fathar system."

"You got it, Commander. Should arrive there in about four hours."

Miranda was about to turn on her heel when Shepard addressed her. "And Miranda? Yeoman Chambers can handle the job of being my secretary. I believe you have more important things to do." Just a plain statement of fact. Nothing petty or insulting about it. She wasn't letting Miranda get away with anything, nor was she creating feelings of resentment. _She knows what she's doing. Like I should be surprised._

"Of course, Commander."

When Lawson had disappeared into the elevator, Shepard sighed and rubbed the back of her neck. "Four hours. That leaves me enough time to go over the engineers' parts request, get those new shotgun upgrades installed, keep Grunt from tearing apart the bulkhead. Maybe even find someone to calibrate those pain-in-the-ass guns..."

"Or get some sleep," Garrus suggested casually.

"Sleep?" she laughed at the idea. Then she cleared her throat. "I'm fine, really. Another cup of coffee and I'll be good to go." _Doesn't want me to worry._

"I'm sorry, Shepard. I don't feel safe under the command of someone who's been running off caffeine for days on end," he pointed out. Shepard raised an eyebrow. "You're compromised. In which case, leadership would be transferred to your first officer... which is me, right?"

"No. You'd be answering to Lawson."

"Well, now it's even more important that you're running one-hundred percent."

"I appreciate the thought, but someone's got to keep this ship running one-hundred percent."

Garrus considered this for a moment. "I'll take care of those calibrations. And forgive my ignorance, but what is a 'Grunt?'"

Shepard smiled wryly. "New team member, tank bred by a lunatic warlord to be the purest krogan. You should go say hi."

"Sounds playful. I like it. But, ahhh, perhaps you are the best equipped to deal with that one."

"I thought so," she said, crossing her arms over her chest and settling her weight on one foot.

"Any other fun people I should introduce myself to?"

"Oh yeah!" She began ticking the names off her fingers. "There's Jack, the pyschotic biotic who generally likes to be topless. Samara, asari justicar. Turns people into pulp with her mind. And Thane Krios, our very own drell assassin." She paused. "He's a pretty nice guy." Garrus filed the information away for future reference. "You'll fit right in."

"Colorful bunch. Do I get my own two-word description, too? Garrus, turian heartthrob. Or maybe, sniper extraordinaire." _Nice mouthfeel on that one._

"How about... stylish sidekick?" Shepard suggested.

"Sidekick?" he repeated in mock offense. "Is that all I am to you?

"Okay, okay, fine." She searched her mind for a better noun. A few came right away, but she didn't say them aloud. "Umm. A really good friend?"

"That's more than two words, Dahlia," he said softly. Shepard hadn't noticed that they'd moved closer and closer, that his rough, ungloved hands were on the vulnerable underside of her wrists.

"I..." She couldn't thinnk of what she wanted to say. Suddenly, she became very aware of her surroundings. "Uhh, should get to work." She pulled back. "Lots to do."

Garrus noticed a vibrant pink spreading across her cheeks, highlighting a deeper orange spiderwebbing of cybernetics beneath her natural pale color. _She's not just skin and bones anymore. _He got to wondering what was underneath it all.

"Right," he said, his eyes not leaving her. "Two hours of sleep. No less."

Shepard opened her mouth to protest, but Garrus wasn't giving up on this. "I'll come up there to make sure you really are asleep. So work fast." She seemed okay with that.

Down at the main battery, Garrus rolled his shoulders, readying himself for some long calibrations. While the terminal powered up, he took stock of his surroundings; roomy, mostly quiet, even a bed...

And on that bed was his helmet, gloves neatly tucked inside.


	4. Chapter 4

Four

After being fully immersed in the laborious task of calibrating the Normandy's main gun for nearly two hours, Garrus finally turned away from the screen, his legs aching from standing still for so long. _Couldn't they put a chair in here or something? No wonder there hasn't been anyone calibrating this thing._ Not to mention the dull throbbing in his head had increased to more of a cacophonous pounding. He wanted to lay down for a bit, but then reminded himself he promised he'd check up on Shepard. _She probably needs sleep more than I do. _Considering he had just survived a missile in the teeth, that was saying something. Besides, talking to her made the pain less prominent.

When he got up to her quarters, he found her sitting on the couch with a holo pad in her hands, her eyebrows furrowed as she read.

"What's that?" Garrus asked. She jumped at the sound of his voice. _She didn't notice me come in. Less rested than I thought. _

"I was just about to put it away, I swear," Shepard replied a little guiltily. Garrus sat on the coffee table, nudging aside a small army of empty mugs with dark stains at the bottom. His knee was up against the sofa, touching hers. He read the text at the top of the screen.

It was an article on the extranet about entire missing colonies in the Terminus Systems. It didn't mention Collectors or Reapers. "A little light reading, hmm?" Garrus asked.

Shepard licked her lips, her gaze drifting past Garrus. There was a haunted look on her face. "Just reminding myself why we're fighting."

"Somehow, I doubt you have much else on your mind." He took the pad from her, setting it down next to himself and out of her reach. "I don't think giving yourself nightmares is going to help anyone."

"It's just that..." she seemed to be lost in her thoughts, eyes darting back and forth as she searched for something on the horizon, unknown to Garrus. "I worry."

"I'd be concerned if you didn't," he replied. He knew that she was holding out on him, but it wasn't like Shepard to unload all of her emotions at once. While he wasn't sure that bottling everything up was the best course of action, he'd have to trust that she knew what she was doing. And that she knew there was someone willing to listen, should she change her mind. "You know, you don't have to deal with all of this by yourself."

She appeared to be uncomfortable for a moment before saying, "I guess so." Not the heartfelt response he was looking for, but good enough for now.

"Now, before some other crisis comes up, will you _please _get some sleep?" he asked her, returning back to his original purpose. To his displeasure, she hesitated.

"Chambers wanted me to go over these reports..."

"To hell with that. They can wait," he told her inadvertently, getting to his feet and pulling her by the arm. "Sleep. Now." He practically had to drag her over to the bed.

"I'm going, I'm going..." she muttered, settling herself on top of the blankets. "See? Sleeping. Mission accomplished, Officer Vakarian. You're relieved of duty."

"I think I'm going to stick around for a bit. Just in case you need someone to sing you a lullaby, or perhaps tie you up." She never was one to take orders laying down.

"Fine. Make yourself useful and hit the lights."

"Yes, ma'am." He did as he was told, then picked up her boots from where she'd kicked them off and set them neatly at the foot of her bed.

"Hey," she said faintly. "How about that lullaby?"

He gave a low chuckle in response. "You'd be laughing too hard to fall asleep."

She sat up, legs curled into her chest, so she could meet his eyes. Her hair fell in soft waves around her face, loosed from its usual ponytail. She gave off an ethereal aura, glowing a delicate blue from the fish tanks, the only source of light in the room. Garrus rubbed the back of his neck tentatively then perched at the edge of the bed. Without any trace of uncertainty, Shepard grabbed his hand. All at once, this fearless warrior who had killed Saren and his legions of geth, who carried Garrus on her back as he was dying, who held the fate of billions in her hands, who had beat death at its own game, suddenly revealed herself to be only mortal. Without the guns and the armor and the killer instincts, Shepard wasn't an Alliance Commander, a Spectre, or an agent of Cerberus. She was just Shepard. "C'mon. You can do a short one."

"Okay. You win." They laid back onto the pillows, her fingers still intertwined in his. _Five fingers? That's just excessive. _They closed their eyes, and it occurred to Garrus that he didn't know any actual lullabies.

So he began to hum softly, recalling from a blurred memory some long forgotten tune that his mother might have sang to him when he was young. Or from some ad blaring at him on the Citadel. Either way, it seemed to be doing its job. A few tender, melancholy notes into the song, Shepard's grip on his hand loosened, her muscles relaxing. Garrus didn't have to keep it up for long before he was sure she had succumbed to deep, much-needed sleep. _She'll be out for a while._ He cut his humming short, gingerly sliding his hand out of hers. His duty there was done, and as much as he would've liked to stay, he couldn't risk disturbing her rest. He inched towards the edge of the bed.

"Did I say you could stop?" Shepard's eyes had fluttered open. "Just kidding. But..." she paused, looking somewhat conflicted. Before she could think too much about it, she said, "You don't have to leave."

"I won't go if you don't want me to," Garrus said. Careful not to put his rough hand on the delicate skin of her face, he brushed a few rebellious locks of hair back into place.

"Good," Shepard said. Her eyes closed again. "Wake me up in two hours."

"I will."

"Feed the fish while you're here."

"Okay."

"Thank you, Garrus."

"You're welcome, Dahlia."

After Garrus fed the colorful fish, he wandered around Shepard's desk area. _This is probably the only chance I'll ever get to snoop through her stuff. _And he was not going to let the oppurtunity pass him by.

Interesting. There was a framed holo of Kaidan Alenko by her terminal. It made him a little uneasy. But, to his pleasure, there was a picture of the whole team from the original Normandy on the reverse side. Urdnot Wrex stood at the edge, grumpily staring down the camera man, probably scaring him witless in doing so. Liara T'Soni was next to him, smiling as carefully and mysteriously as a sphinx. Tali, next towards the center, somehow revealed more emotion than her asari comrade, despite her enviromental suit. She seemed proud to be standing with the others, on the tips of her toes to look as tall as the rest of them. Garrus often forgot that at the time, Tali had basically been a teenager. Fourth from the end was himself. _Look at that handsome fellow in the dashing Phantom armor. _Seeing himself two and a half years in the past made him realize what a hard two and a half years it had been.

At the other end of the line was Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams. Garrus knew that Ash held onto a deep-rooted feeling of mistrust for aliens, but after her death on Virmire... _she was a good soldier. _She was smiling in the picture, the helmet of her trademark Phoenix armor perched on her hip. _A damn good soldier. _Alenko was next to her. He also was smiling, but only just. Garrus noted sourly that his eyes were on Shepard. Garrus respected Kaidan's abilities; that didn't mean he had to like the guy.

In the center of them, between Garrus and Kaidan, was Shepard. The flash from the camera was reflected on her Colossus armor, highlighting the red detail. Unlike everyone else, she didn't seem to realize that the picture was being taken. She stood slightly in front of the formation, turned to the side and one hand perched on her hip. Her focus lay beyond the frame. Garrus thought he remembered a crew member interrupting the moment with some petty issue or another. _So really, nothing's changed __since then. _

The time between when she was killed and when she was reconstructed by Cerberus couldn't have seemed like more than a few seconds to her. She'd gone right from fighting Saren and the geth to these new things, the Collectors. No shore leave, no two year hiatus. Garrus stared at her, the holo still in his hand, trying to figure out how the hell she did it all. _What makes you tick, Shepard, and then keep on ticking? How do you live like this? _Any lesser being would surely have fallen apart under the tremendous weight of it all. Not that he was complaining. She was, after all, the only one who had a shot at saving the galaxy.

Garrus set the holo back down, this time the side with their team facing the room. _Gotta keep your priorities straight, woman. _He logged onto her private terminal. Her personal messages were open when the interface resumed. There were no unread messages, but there was plenty of stuff in the archived folder. One near the top got his attention right away.

_ Kaidan Alenko? _Come to think of it, he hadn't seen him aboard the Normandy. Shepard would have said something if he were. Also, the message came from an Alliance comm buoy; if Kaidan was still with the Alliance, there was no way he'd be on a Cerberus ship. He opened the message, interested in what Wonder Boy had to say.

_Oh. _Whatever Garrus was expecting, it wasn't what was inside the message. Some stuff about him dealing with her death, a doctor on the Citadel, lots of emotional junk... His eyes skipped over the text, until it got to the part where he'd seen her again, how so much had changed while she was dead. _As if merely by being with Cerberus, she's turned bad or something. _Kaidan was obviously loyal to the Alliance and held onto an inherent hatred towards Cerberus, but this was Shepard they were talking about. He shouldn't need much more reason than that to believe in the cause. _Hold on... what's this about the night before Ilos? "That night meant everything to me... maybe it meant as much to you." _Garrus glared at Shepard's sleeping form. _You dirty, dirty girl. _Honestly, he didn't understand what Shepard saw in Alenko. Okay, he did have that whole tortured L2 biotic thing going for him. Not to mention those dark, smoldering eyes and very well-sculpted muscles. Nice ass, too. _Well, why don't I just sleep with him myself since he's so freaking attractive? _Garrus sighed. He supposed he could forgive her for that minor slip-up.

_Still, what's this "When things settle down" business? _Kaidan had abandoned Shepard. You didn't get second chances with a woman like her. Shepard would probably find it in her heart to set things right with Kaidan, eventually. But in Garrus's own humble opinion, she could do better. Much, much better.

Garrus went back to perusing her archived messages. One of the more recent ones, stored at the bottom of the list, caught his eye. _Hmmm. _It had his name on it. He looked at the sender._ Nalah Butler..._ he read the message from his former squad mate's wife.

"Shit," he said, his voice thick. Her message said that Butler had been proud, that he'd died with honor... why did that thought make his stomach flip-flop and his throat burn? With the help of his twelve disciples, Garrus had tried to take back Omega from the crime lords and the thugs, and protect the innocent. Butler had answered to a higher calling. He was a hero. _And it's my fault that he's dead. That Omega lost a hero. Twelve heroes. _The thought that he had the blood of those brave, altruistic warriors on his hands... it made him squeeze his eyes shut and cover his face with his hands. He read the final lines of the message: _"You're his commander now. Please, if you can, help him stop blaming himself. And please don't tell that I sent you this_." "How the fuck am I supposed to stop blaming myself when it's all my fault?"

"You accept it." Shepard's voice came from behind him.

He whirled around to face her, startled. "Shepard, I'm s-"

"Stop. It's fine." She didn't really like that he'd been going through her stuff without her knowledge, but she found it very difficult to get angry at him. Besides, with all the bugs planted around the ship and Miranda monitoring her inbox, Shepard was kind of used to her privacy being invaded. "Can we talk about this?"

Garrus stared hard at his hands. He hated "talks." When his father wanted to "talk," it meant that he was trying to curb Garrus along the path he felt was the best instead of listening to what his son wanted. When his old boss, Executor Pallin, wanted to "talk," he was usually being reprimanded for doing his job the wrong way, even though it still got done. But Shepard was the one authority figure in his life he didn't resent. So what did it mean when she wanted to have a talk?

He gave a nod of assent.

She hopped up onto the desk surface, her bare feet dangling next to Garrus's knees. "Okay. Look, what Nalah said is right. Blaming yourself is going to do more harm than good. You can't let your guilt define you," she said.

Of course he wanted to forget. If he could, he'd tear out the memory by the roots and never think of his failure ever again, never have to relive the horror of finding all his team mates dead. But he couldn't. That wasn't how life worked. "You don't know what it's like," he shot back at her, raising his voice. "You've never lost that many men."

"They don't call me the 'Butcher of Torfan' for nothing," she replied bitterly. _Crap. _Garrus had forgotten about that. "Almost my entire unit lost their lives under my command, because I chose to kill every last batarian on that godforsaken moon." Her voice turned hard as she recalled the event. "You know what happened to Major Kyle afterwards. He couldn't handle the loss, so he was sidelined permanently." She paused and blink the mistiness out of her eyes. "So you tell me, Garrus: are you going to keep fighting for the sake of this galaxy, or are you going to sit it out because you can't get over what happened?"

Garrus remained silent for a moment, processing. Then, he looked up at her and asked, "But how do you do it, Shepard?" She looked taken back. "How could you forget what you did?" Tears briefly threatened to spill over. To his relief, they didn't. He wasn't equipped to deal with that kind of thing.

"I never forgot, Garrus. Not for a single day. And neither will you." She cleared her throat. "The best you can do is vow to do better."

"And that's enough?" Cleared of any sign of weakness, her eyes met his, seeing straight through to his core.

"It has to be."


	5. Chapter 5

Five

"Sleeping on the job? You're the worst alarm clock ever." Garrus woke to the sound of Shepard's voice near his head.

He sat up and rubbed the back of his neck guiltily. "Well, damn. Just when I thought this could be a regular gig."

Shepard bounced off the bed, scoffing. "Not a chance." She was already showered, her black hair pulled back into a ponytail. She was dressed in a gray tank top and skin-tight shorts. As she bent over to slide her feet into her greaves, Garrus noticed that her hips looked very supportive. "Now get off your ass and help me with my armor. I don't take kindly to slackers, Vakarian."

He got to his feet eagerly, ready to assist. "This is your idea of punishment? I want to know what your rewards are like."

As she turned around to hand him the back plate, she shot him one of those _don't get cute with me_ looks, but there was a playful gleam in her eye. "Do something good and you might just find out."

"Aye-aye, Commander." He accepted the piece of armor from her and got to work fitting it into place, like a complex puzzle piece. When he put it close to her body, he seized the oppurtunity to examine the orange weave beneath the surface of her skin. Everywhere, there were tiny rifts, giving Shepard an all-over subdued glow. It was unnerving. He wondered why Cerberus didn't seal her up all the way. Curious, he ran a talon over one of the fissures.

"Hey," she giggled. _Giggling. How strange. _"Tickling is stricly prohibited."

"What's... 'tickling?'" he asked her.

She did an about-face and he helped her secure her shoulder pads. She held them in place while he secured them to her back and chest plates. "It's like... when you touch someone and make them laugh."

Garrus's mandibles flared as he pondered this. He cupped her chin in one of his hands and said, "I will never, as long as I live, understand your ridiculous human customs." She laughed loudly, her head tilting back as she did so. "There!" Garrus said excitedly. "Was that a tickling?"

She was grinning. "Sure, Garrus. Well done." She pulled on her gauntlets, flexing her fingers as she did so to get them positioned exactly right. "Let's get to the comm room. Time to get this show on the road."

As she punched the down button on the elevator, Garrus cleared his throat. "If you don't mind my asking, who do you usually enlist for getting you into your armor?"

Shepard glanced up at the elevator level counter above the doors before looking up at him. The harsh overhead lighting made her eyes shine brightly. "I usually do it myself. It was nice to have some help with it."

_You won't have to do it alone ever again. I'll see to it myself. _But before the words could leave his mouth, the doors opened and Shepard strode out. He'd lost his chance.

When they arrived in the briefing room, the team was already assembled. They might try her patience in other areas, but no one dared to keep Shepard waiting, or have the gall to skip out on a mission brief. Besides, if they weren't present, she wouldn't take them with her on the mission. And, by the looks of it, they were all itching for some action.

"Shepard," Miranda Lawson said, drawing everyone's attention to her entrance. _As if they could've missed her. _Shepard returned her greeting with a curt nod, her eyes sweeping the room and taking account of every team member's prescence. She took her place, standing at the head of the table. Garrus sidled in next to her. Jacob, who was previously on her right, grudgingly slid over. Shepard pretended not to notice the exchange.

"EDI, bring up the schematics," Shepard said.

"Yes, Commander." A layout of a ship was projected as a holographic image at the center of the table. The lights dimmed slightly so they could get a better look at it.

"At 1400 hours local time, the MSV Platinum Jennet went dark. Engines have been cold for about eight hours. There's been no distress beacon," Shepard explained to the team.

"So what?" a man drawled from the back of the room. He wore mercenary armor, and one side of his face was badly scarred. _Looks like we have something in common._ He spoke in an accent not unsimilar to Dr. Chakwas's. "These are the Terminus Systems, Shepard. Probably just some of those goddamn batarian pirates."

She didn't grace his question with a response. Instead, she addressed the ship's AI. "Play the first clip, hold at eight seconds."

The ship schematics disappeared from the table, replaced by an outside view of two ships. The first was the MSV Platinum Jennet. At the sight of the second one, Garrus was struck with a barely repressable urge to grab Shepard and run.

It was a Collector ship. The same one that destroyed the Normandy. He was sure of it.

Shepard's composure remained intact, her cool, unphased mask not slipping for a moment. "More than just pirates, Zaeed. The Collectors docked with the MSV Platinum Jennet, then left an hour later without opening fire."

"But why?" Tali spoke up. "The Collectors have only targeted colonies, where they could gather large numbers of humans at once. What would they want with a commerce vessel?"

"You forget that this used to be the way Collectors took people, Tali. They come in, do their business discreetly, then get out," Miranda interjected before Shepard could reply. Tali perched her hands on her hips, on the defensive.

"Obviously, something has changed. They're not acting how they usually do, Miranda," she retaliated venomously.

"Since you're the expert, why don't -"

"Enough." Shepard was remarkably calm. Garrus was sure that if she didn't have those two hours of sleep under her belt, she would've tossed both Tali and Miranda about the cabin like rag dolls with her biotics in a caffeine-fueled rage. "At this point, all we know is that the Collectors are behind this. You're each entitled to your own speculations, but we don't have much to go on. Which is why we're here." She gripped the edge of the holographic projection platform. "To find out what happened."

Grunt looked slightly crestfallen. He didn't want to investigate. He wanted to kill things. With his hands.

"Could you replay that last clip?" Garrus asked. While the others had been talking, he'd been thinking. The AI responded instantaneously. The first ten seconds of the clip played, then the next. "What planet is that, in the background?"

EDI launched into description. "The closest planet to the MSV Platinum Jennet is called Lorek, an extremely rare example of a habitable world -"

"Right. Thanks. Well, look at the Collector ship's movement in relation to Lorek." The whole room went silent as they watched a few more seconds of the clip.

"It remains still," Tali observed.

"Yes. Now look at the Platinum Jennet." Everyone leaned forward, eyes straining.

"There!" Kasumi, the hooded girl Garrus had seen earlier, exclaimed. "It's heading towards the Collector ship."

"Which means...?" Zaeed asked, mystified as to why it was such a big deal. Why any of it was a big deal. Secretly, he still thought batarian terrorists were involved somehow.

Miranda stepped forward. "Which means that they went to the Collectors. It's exactly the same way the used to operate. The people onboard the Jennet made a deal with them, and they're making the trade," she said, smug that her initial guess had been correct.

"That still doesn't explain why all their systems are dark!" Tali pointed out. She was unwilling to let that Cerberus snob have the satisfaction, even for a second.

The side conversations continued, growing to a constant chatter inside the white comm room. Shepard showed no sign that she heard any of them. Her eyes seemed to be on the projection of the Collector ship, but her expression revealed that she was submerged deep in her own thoughts. Miranda looked like she wanted to say something to Shepard, but held off, instead opting to cast a dirty look at Tali then saunter over to speak in hushed tones with Jacob, the only other real Cerberus agent in the room.

"That _bosh'tet _thinks she knows everything..." Tali muttered, mostly to herself but also to Garrus. Personally, he agreed with her, but saying so would only affirm and strengthen her negative view. _I should probably just keep my mouth shut. _There were definitely more than a few people in the room that he was glad were on Shepard's side. Pissing them off would end very, very badly.

For example, the justicar. Her wide aquamarine eyes slowly took in her surroundings, eventually coming around to rest on Garrus. He suddenly felt self-conscious. _I'm not doing anything illegal, am I? _But he didn't dare avert his eyes; he knew how these things worked. If he looked down, it'd make him look guilty. Of something. She stared at him, possibly waiting for some kind of response. _Wonder if she's always this friendly, or if I'm just special. _He gave her a slight nod, making sure to maintain eye contact.

She closed the distance between them in three easy steps, her stride as fluid as flowing water. "You are Garrus Vakarian?" Her voice was low and even. "I am Samara. Shepard spoke to me of your deeds, upon your return." Arms stiff at her side, Samara bowed slightly to Garrus. "Your actions were most noble. Omega owes you a great debt."

"Well..." his fingers felt a little tingly. He wasn't used to people being grateful for his work as Archangel. Mostly, they just wanted to kill him. "Thank you, but I didn't do it to get anything from them."

"Of course not." Her eyes darted back to Shepard, then him again. "Heroes never do."

Garrus liked Samara. She was intensely frightening and would probably crush his skull if he so much as set a toe out of line, but other than that, she was pretty friendly.

The sound of harsh laughter from the opposite side of the room made Garrus look up. A bald, shirtless girl covered in tattoos was talking to the mercenary, Zaeed. Her lips were curled back to reveal shiny white teeth in what barely passed as a smile. She noticed Garrus looking at her, then narrowed her eyes. Her arm wound back, and her biotics flashed. He reached for his sidearm, sure she was about to try and throw him. Instead, she made a very rude gesture with one of her fingers. She laughed again, then returned to her conversation.

"Making friends, Garrus?" Tali asked, noticing altercation. He could've sworn she was smiling.

Garrus shrugged, letting his arm fall to the side. "Oh, definitely. All of the galaxy's best and brightest killers in one big, fun mix. I don't know why I didn't join up earlier. This is great."

"Glad to see your sarcasm is still intact. Though I can't say the same for your face."

"Low blow."

"I'll introduce you to Thane. He won't judge you too harshly, I promise." _Hollow words coming from a quarian. _Still, he obliged.

Thane was the drell assassin Shepard mentioned before. He was exchanging a few quiet words with Samara when Tali and Garrus approached.

"Thane, meet our newest team member," Tali said, presenting her charge proudly.

"Ah, yes. Garrus Vakarian. I'm honored. Shepard holds you in very high regard," Thane said, shaking Garrus's hand. _Hmm. Very firm. _"I look forward to seeing your reputation on the battlefield for myself." _Was it just me, or did that sound like a challenge?_

"I'm sure you'll have more than a few oppurtunities," Garrus returned.

"Of course," Tali piped up. "Thane goes with Shepard on most missions. You know how she likes a good sniper covering her six." _Oh, does she. _Garrus knew that. Probably better than Thane did. "And 'good' doesn't even begin to cover it! Thane probably knows his way around a sniper rifle better than anyone else on the team..."

He tried to refrain from doing so, but Garrus ended up glaring at her. Tali realized what she'd said. "I mean, you're both really, really good." _Way to throw me under the tomkah. _

"Miss Zorah, you flatter me. I am but Shepard's humble servant. I act only on her command," Thane returned, dipping his head respectfully.

"So if she asked you to throw yourself out the airlock, would you?" The words had left his mouth before Garrus could stop them.

Thane, for reasons unknown to Garrus, smiled. "If that is what she wishes." _Intriguing idea. I'm sure it can be arranged. _Tali forced a nervous laugh, frantically searching for something to say that would soothe the strange rivalry that had suddenly risen between the two warriors.

Luckily for Tali, Shepard had finished collecting her thoughts. She stood up straight and cleared her throat, immediately getting the attention of the room. "Time's wasting. I'll be taking in two teams to search the ship."

"Ma'am." Jacob stepped forward, saluting as he did so. "I volunteer."

She accepted his offer with a nod. "You'll lead the second team."

"Possibility of wounded on ship. Medical experience would come in handy. Or tech incinerations. Either one. Both, most likely." Mordin, the salarian Garrus recognized from when Shepard found him on Omega, said, taking a deep sniff after he finished speaking.

"Good idea. Jacob, take Mordin with you. We'll regroup if we find survivors," Shepard said. After seeing how the Collectors operated, she was doubtful that there would be anyone left on the ship, but as he mentioned, his tech attacks would be useful. Besides, it was best to prepare for the worst.

"I'll take the third spot on their team," Miranda said, with a note of finality.

"You'll stay here on the ship." Shepard knew that, as the Illusive Man's right hand woman, Miranda felt a sense of entitlement when it came to leadership on the Normandy. She found that passive aggressive remarks often did the trick when it came to putting her back in line. But, however misguided her intentions, Miranda still served as a valuable second when Shepard was otherwise occupied. "If the Collector's show up while we're out, save the ship. Clear?"

"Yes, Commander." Garrus got the feeling that the Cerberus agent wouldn't hesitate to pull out if it came to that.

"Legion, you're on sniping duty. You take orders from Jacob Taylor. Are you okay with that?" Garrus was more than a little surprised to see that she was speaking to... a geth platform. Not just speaking to him, but asking if he was okay. And no one was trying to kill it. It did have a suspiciously familiar piece of N7 armor strapped down on one side, which made Garrus reconsider his initial impulse to shoot it. It didn't seem to be the same sort of geth they'd spent months fighting.

"Acknowledged, Shepard Commander." _If anyone can convince the geth to oppose the Reapers, it's Shepard. _He got to wondering how she managed to catch this one. It was probably a worthwhile tale.

"Shepard, I know ships the best of anyone on the crew. I can do the navigating," Tali said matter-of-factly. Her experience was undeniable in that area, and since the ship was completely without power, EDI was unable to establish a connection. If they were going to get any assistance from the Normandy, they'd have to get the Platinum Jennet's systems online. And to do that, Shepard needed Tali.

"I agree. You're with me."

Thane started to volunteer for Shepard's team, but Garrus smoothly beat him to it. "I'd like to accompany you. You'll need a sniper on your team."

"Alright. Thane and Garrus, you're coming with me and Tali."

"Just like old times, huh, Garrus?" Tali said in an aside to her turian teammate. Garrus nodded, but not before glancing back to look at the drell. _Not quite, but close enough._ He didn't know why Shepard included Thane in their group, and it seemed like the rest of the room agreed. Shepard usually operated in threes. A team of four was unprecedented.

"Wait," Jack said from the back of the room. She approached the projection table. "How come you're taking both of them? Did you forget how to count?"

The twelve of them looked at Shepard. They all knew Jack was pyscho, but even pyschos generally knew not to screw with Shepard. They each secretly hoped Shepard would dramatically force her back in line.

"I need them both on my team for this." Samara admired her enigmatic expression.

"Bullshit. You're playing favorites." If Miranda were in Shepard's place, she'd have already locked the unruly team member in the cargo hold.

"If you have a problem with the way things are being run, you can take it up with me later. Right now, we have a mission to do." Even Shepard's patience wasn't unlimited.

"Don't give me that crap, Shepard," Jack said loudly, pointing over the table in an accusatory manner.

The Commander left the head of the table, taking a few steps towards Jack. Miranda and Jacob swiftly removed themselves from her path, the others next to them quickly following suit. "You got a problem, Jack?" _By the looks of it, more than one. More than a hundred, I'm guessing. _Shepard stood barely a foot away from Jack, piercing eyes focused full force on her. Jack's knuckles turned white as she gripped the edge of the projection table. "Spit it out."

Jack took the expression literally, a big glob of spit landing near Shepard's boot. Garrus was sure that if she'd misfired and hit Shepard, there would be a Jack-sized hole in the ceiling. "Yeah, I got a problem. I've been on this ship too goddamn long, and if you think I'm going to sit downstairs picking my nose while you and your big hero friends have all the fun, you have another fucking thing coming."

Shepard's expression remained unreadable as she considered this. On one hand, she didn't want Jack coming along and screwing up the whole mission with her loud, violent manner, as she'd done on more than one occasion. On the other hand, she didn't want her going on a killing rampage on the Normandy from being stir-crazy. From the stories Jack herself had told her, it wouldn't be the first time. Shepard would rather risk this one mission than the lives of everyone onboard the ship.

"You do whatever Jacob tells you. If I hear about any misbehavior, I'll personally lock you up so tight it'll make Purgatory look like day care. Then I'll throw your sorry ass through the Omega Four Relay to make sure it actually works." The room was so quiet, Garrus could have cut the tension with a knife.

The two women remained locked in a staring contest. Jack caved first, as most of them expected she would. "Well, shit, Shepard. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were starting to like me."

Shepard looked at Legion. "Put a bullet in her head if she gets out of line."

"Affirmative." The comment seemed to please Jack.

_Oh, yeah. This is going to go great. _


	6. Chapter 6

Six

"Okay, people. Shuttle in seven minutes or you're getting left behind," Shepard said, dismissing her team to get their gear ready. Speaking of, she had a grenade launcher to prep. Not wasting any time, she headed straight for the armory.

"Seven whole minutes. Generous of her," Kasumi said. The others grunted in assent.

"So, Garrus." Jacob approached him, getting his attention with a nod. "Need me to realign the scope on that Widow of yours? I'm sorry to say that it may have gotten banged around a bit when we hauled you out of Omega."

"The thought had just crossed my mind." _No point in aiming if you've got the wrong target in your sights._

"I recommend the Viper for this mission," Thane interceded. _Hmm. Don't remember asking him for his opinion. _"Shepard keeps us right in the action. In my experience, lining up the perfect shot each time is nearly impossible. The Viper's rate of fire compensates."

_"In my experience." Pfff. Who does he think he is? _But, much as he'd like to, Garrus couldn't deny his logic. Especially in tight quarters, such as the ship they'd be investigating, the Viper would be more effective. Besides, they only had seven minutes (probably closer to six at that point). He didn't really have time to get his rifle from downstairs, bring it up for Jacob to realign, and make it to the shuttle before Shepard left.

"Good point, Thane. We keep a few extras stocked. I have time to squeeze in a few basic upgrades," Jacob said, leading the two of them out of the briefing room and through the door on the immediate left, labeled "Armory."

When they arrived, they were surprised to see Shepard sitting in a chair, grimacing noticably and fiddling with the grenade launcher in her lap while Mordin worked behind her. He set down the delicate silver prongs he was holding, then picked up a sterile metal tray with a small, blinking black device.

"Go ahead and toss the L3. That thing doesn't fit right anymore," Shepard said through gritted teeth.

"Switching amps, I see," Thane said. She nodded then instantly regretted it, loosing a string of colorful vocabulary.

"Would be easier, less painful under anesthesia. Told you not to move," Mordin chided her.

"Yeah, yeah." Her fingers curled around the grenade launcher's grip. Thane strode over to brush her ponytail away from her neck, giving Mordin a clear space to work with.

"Is this the L4?" he asked, trying to get her mind off the tiny device being inserted into the base of her skull.

"The L5n." She cast a glowering look at Jacob. "Dunno why you didn't just stick one of these in my head before you woke me up."

Jacob shrugged. "We were supposed to have a few more weeks. And anyway, the L3s are good." He looked a little defensive, before adding, "I use an L3." Then he got to work setting Garrus up with the Viper.

There was a terrible pinching feeling at the back of her neck when Mordin inserted the bio-amp into its slot. She drew a breath sharply. Mordin shook his head.

"Stubborn. Should've put you under... used morphine, perhaps."

She'd wanted to get the implant in before the mission, since they really had no idea what they were walking into, and she needed the full use of all her abilities. That included not being hopped up on painkillers. "Are you finished?"

"Yes, Commander." Garrus noticed that Thane didn't remove his hand from Shepard's neck.

"Are you in much pain?" he heard him ask her. She released her death grip on the grenade launcher, standing up to sling it over her back and wincing as she did so. Thane's arm dropped to his side.

"I'm fine." She glanced between Thane, Garrus, Jacob, and Mordin. "Don't be late, gentlemen." Then she was gone.

Garrus saw Thane watch her leave, a somber expression on the drell's face. Whatever Garrus thought of thim, he had to admit that there seemed to be some kind of close bond between Thane and Shepard. Thane obviously knew that she couldn't bear to let anyone see that the great Commander Shepard had any weakness. Garrus didn't know if he liked him more or less for it. _Well, at least I know there will always be someone to guard her six._

It was a bit of a tight fit onto the shuttle. Between the eight of them, not including the pilot, they nearly ended up sitting on each other's laps. Especially since they were all doing their best to sit as far away as possible from Jack, who was sprawled out smugly in the middle of one of the benches. Unwilling to put up with more of her attitude, Shepard pushed her legs to the floor, abruptly turning Jack's body, then sat down in the seat beside her. Garrus took the window seat next to her, letting his leg rest along side hers. Legion sat on the other side of Jack, probably because he was the one whose buttons were hardest to push. Tali, Thane, Mordin, and Jacob seated themselves on the bench across from them.

As soon as everyone was settled, Shepard rapped on the pilot's cabin with her knuckles, giving the go-ahead for take-off.

"Any instructions before we head in, Commander?" Jacob asked as the shuttle left the Normandy's hangar and started heading towards the MSV Platinum Jennet. He pretty much knew the drill, but the silence inside the shuttle was starting to get uncomfortable.

Shepard's eyes flicked back and forth at the infinite blackness just outside their window. She had a faraway look in her eyes and, for a moment, Jacob thought he hadn't heard his question. "Don't touch anything you shouldn't."

Garrus was amused. _Typical Shepard-ism. _None of the crew members seemed to have a problem with this answer. Or, if they did, they hid it well. After all, none of them wanted to look incompetent. But just to be safe, Garrus would let Shepard do all the touching.

"Do you think we will encounter many hostiles?" Thane asked. He didn't look worried; he just liked to be prepared.

"C'mon, frog boy, this is Shepard we're talking about," Jack said, jerking her thumb towards her commander. Thane raised an eyebrow. "Shit practically falls out of the sky trying to kill her. My guess? We're going to get our hands a little dirty."

"There's no evidence to suggest that there is anyone on the ship," Tali said, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Logic is on our side," Mordin concurred.

"Yeah, but the odds aren't. Look, how many times have we walked into something like this, thinking it would be a piece of cake, only to have those words shoved down our throats?" That ceased the opposition. _More than once, probably. Or twice. Actually, it probably happens on a pretty regular basis. _

Shepard spoke up to quell the argument. "We'll deal with whatever is on that ship. If you're unprepared for that, you should've stayed on the Normandy." And that was that.

It was too quiet. Inside the Platinum Jennet's airlock, there were no lights or sounds. It was just as Tali had felt when she'd first come aboard the Normandy: its silent engines had made her think that the vital systems had shut down, and that they'd all soon be dead. But, onboard the Platinum Jennet, everything actually was shut down. Not to mention that the total absence of life or movement. Tali didn't think she'd ever been on a ship that was completely empty before. She gripped her shotgun nervously. It was going to be a long mission.

"Shepard, I have detected no hull breaches. The atmosphere inside the MSV Platinum Jennet is intact." Good. That meant that Shepard could leave her helmet on the shuttle. She hated losing that extra millimeter of peripheral vision.

"Anything else?"

"I am unable to run any further scans. Turning on the auxiliary power will allow me into their system to access their schematics. Until then, I cannot provide assistance," EDI informed Shepard via comm link.

"Got it. Radio immediately if any other ships approach."

"Yes, Shepard."

The comm link clicked off. Shepard turned to hear teammates to give directions. "Tali, where would we be able to get the auxiliary power online?"

"Most ships have a master power breaker near the bridge. But if this ship is of asari make, systems maintenance and control will be in engineering, on the lower decks."

"And the bridge would be on the upper decks?"

"That's correct."

"Okay, simple enough. Jacob, take your team and search for the bridge on the upper decks. We'll cover the lower decks."

"Ooh, going in to the dark, scary basement. Watch out for the boogeyman!" Jack taunted, bluntly voicing all of their concerns. They were walking into an abandoned ship that the Collectors had probably visited, and the only source of light came from the handheld flashlights someone thought to stock on the shuttle. All of them were a little on edge. _Maybe some more than others,_ Garrus thought, glancing over to see Tali clutching her shotgun to her chest.

Jack held said flashlight up to her face, twisting her features into a grotesque expression. Jacob rolled his eyes. Shepard tapped a command into her omni-tool, and a powerful LED light mounted on her shoulder pad shot a bright beam directly into Jack's eyes.

"Knock it off. We've got work to do."

Just outside the Platinum Jennet's airlock were two hallways going in the opposite direction. Empty, of course. Tali pointed Jacob's team to where the upper decks were. Jack lagged behind them, turning around to stick her tongue out at Shepard's back just before they disappeared around the corner.

"The stairs should be just through there, Shepard," Tali said. She was standing behind Thane, putting him between herself and the slightly ajar door with nothing but darkness behind it. Shepard approached the door, her shoulder-mounted light casting a narrow strip of light through the crack. She wrapped her fingers around the edges and pulled the sliding doors apart. Normally, they'd open automatically with motion sensors, but that luxury had been lost with the rest of the power on the ship.

Shepard blinked, her eyes adjusting to darkness. The light installed in her armor did very little by way of penetrating the dense emptiness. She'd have to rely on her own senses to pick up anything unusual or dangerous. Putting on a brave smile, she glanced back at her the other three. "See? Nothing to be afraid of."

BOOM. Somewhere from deep within the ship, there was a resounding crash that made the hairs on Shepard's neck stand up. Tali jumped, grabbing onto Thane and quickly releasing him. Shepard took a step back into the hallway and away from the stairs. Whatever was down there was big.

"Riiight," Garrus said, masking his fear with cool nonchalance. "Spoke a little too soon there, Shepard."

She reached for her shotgun, glad she'd gotten that synchronized pulsar damage upgrade for her Eviscerator. "I don't suppose you'd like to lead the way, Garrus?"

"I wouldn't dream of taking that privelege away from you. After all, you're the one with the shotgun."

She smiled. "I thought so." She turned to the other two. "Tali, stay on my flank. Thane, bring up the rear. Take the middle, Garrus. Stay sharp." Try as she might to hide it, Garrus could tell Shepard wasn't too thrilled about heading into the lower decks. They were going in blind, and the previous assumption that there was no one on the ship went right out the airlock. So, armed with their wits, some dim flashlights, and the best guns money could buy, Shepard led her team into the dark unknown.

Every sound was amplified a hundred times in the heavy silence. Even Thane, who was most at home in the shadows, felt vulnerable and loud. He was used to hunting and quietly killing a single target, then disappearing for good. None of this stumbling around in the dark and hoping they'd come across something, at the same time praying they wouldn't. Enemies of any kind could be watching, waiting just around the corner to jump out and start shooting. Thane could imagine Shepard's response to his concerns: _"That's the fun part." _Her sense of fun differed greatly from his. Still, he couldn't argue that there was never a lack of things to do while at her side. He found it preferable to working alone.

"Looks like there's nothing much down here, Shepard. Probably only storage and noncritical systems..." Tali began.

Shepard shushed her, then held up her hand. The four of them stopped. At the bottom of the stairs, they'd come to a hallway that opened up to a larger room. Before continuing on, Shepard intended to search the rooms that connected the the hallway.

"Tali, Thane: take the doors on the left. We'll cover the right," Shepard said, keeping her voice low. They nodded, and got to work.

The first door Garrus and Shepard tried was a supply closet with nothing useful to them inside. The second was some kind of barracks, with bunks stacked along the wall and a small, round table in the center of the room. They entered cautiously.

"Oh my God. It smells like dead varren in here," Shepard said, putting a hand over her nose. She squinted, looking for decaying bodies by the thin light of her shoulder mount. There were no signs of any violence, except for some papers and blankets strewn about the floor. "How do you think they managed to get rid of all the blood?"

Garrus laughed. "That's the smell of a dozen males living together with no female to clean up after them. This ship is definitely not military. Or asari. I'm guessing pirates or mercs."

Shepard stepped around a wrinkled, sticky copy of Fornax. "I almost prefer the varren," she said, glaring at the mess. "But you're probably right. We should -"

"Shepard." Thane was standing in the doorway, the beam of his flashlight pointed at the ground. "There's something you should see."

They were standing in a large room, filled with nothing else besides armor lockers that were mostly open. A majority of them were empty, save for a few towads the back.

"Blue Suns," Garrus said, confirming his earlier suspicion. He'd recognize the emblem anywhere, from the countless times he'd centered his crosshairs on the blue and white pattern on the helmet. He was no stranger to the mercs.

Shepard stared at a set of armor for a minute, then placed her hand on its surface over the white part. "There's only human armor in here," she said, nodding towards the other sets of armor present.

"A storage room for spares, perhaps," Thane suggested.

"No," Garrus said. "This was their main armory. It's right across from their quarters."

"I thought Blue Suns was made up of turians and batarians as well, not just humans," Tali said, trying to make sense of the circumstances.

"They are," Shepard said. "Before the ship lost power, everyone put on their armor. Except the humans."

"What does that mean?" Tali asked. Nothing was making sense to her.

"Maybe they were off duty? They might have divided their rotation shifts by species," Garrus suggested, attempting to reason his way through the circumstances. He glanced at Shepard. He could tell the gears and cogs of her mind were turning, filing away the evidence for later analysis.

"It means we keep looking." She was right: they didn't have enough pieces of the puzzle to form the whole picture. Without sparing any more of their time, the four of them left the empty shells of armor and ventured furhter into the depths of the unknown.


	7. Chapter 7

Seven

Thane, Tali, Garrus, and Shepard continued their search, systematically going through each room they encountered for anything out of the ordinary. It didn't take them long to find something.

"'Do not enter,'" Tali read from a sign posted next to the door of the cargo hold.

"Sounds like something we should take a look at," Garrus said, helping Thane pull apart the thick doors, metal screeching as they did so.

"Good work, Tali," Shepard said, shifting her shotgun to one hand so she could give Tali friendly slap on the back.

"That's what I'm here for," Tali said, reluctantly following her as Thane held the door open. She wished she'd just kept her mouth shut, but it was too late for that. They were going into another dark, silent room, and there wasn't anything she could do about it.

The door they'd gone through was disproportionate to the cavernous space they found themselves in. The beams of their flashlights barely scratched the surface of the depth of the cargo hold, making Shepard wonder what lay beyond.

But it was what was right in front of them that drew Garrus's attention. "That's, uhhh, rather conspicuous."

Shepard took a step back to get the full view. An enormous tarp was sloppily fastened over a huge, towering, something. Straining, she listened for movement. Nothing. She lowered her shotgun, then slid it into the holster at her lower back. The other three took this as a sign to train their sights on the mysterious, hulking mass.

In one fluid movement, Shepard seized the edge of the tarp and snapped it off, retreating a few steps to avoid being buried by the material. Garrus was almost a little disappointed when nothing jumped out and tried to kill them. What was under the tarp turned out to be stacks of square metal crates. _A little anticlimactic for my taste. _

"It appears as if the mercenaries have been running a smuggling operation," Thane said, nodding to the tarp.

"Smuggling what, though?" Tali asked.

"Something the Collectors were interested in?" Garrus wondered. It made sense that the Collectors would collaborate with the mercenaries if they were in a business transaction. Of course, it still didn't answer the question of why the Platinum Jennet went dark after the encounter, and appeared to be completely deserted.

"The Collectors have only dealt with live cargo thus far. What need would they have of... this?" Thane replied, gesturing at the cargo hold.

"And this is...?" Tali trailed off.

"'Somnex Four,'" Shepard declared, kneeling down to read the label on the bottom crate. "Any of you heard of it?" Her teammates shook their heads, moving in closer to investigate. When they tried to pull the crate out for further analysis, it didn't budge.

"Maybe taking one from the top will work?" Garrus suggested. If they pulled too hard at the bottom of the stack, the whole structure might topple over. Not good.

"Stand back," Shepard instructed them, a plan of how to get her hands on one of those crates already formed in her mind. Thane, Tali, and Garrus did as they were told, giving her a wide berth. They knew better than to get too close when Shepard was doing her thing.

Her biotics lit up like the Normandy making an FTL jump. The L5n implant enhanced her corona tenfold, turning her bluer than a frost-bitten asari. A crate from the top of the stack became envelopped in the same blue, levitating gently off its high perch and hovering down to them. Its impact with the ground barely made a sound.

"Empty," Shepard announced upon prying off its lid. She and Thane pulled a few more crates from the amassment with their biotics while Tali and Garrus took a closer look at the packaging.

"This container looked like it held some kind of medical supply," Garrus said, taking note of the markings on the label.

"Stealing medicine is low, even for mercenaries. Though I'm not sure I should expect much more from them," Tali said, her words punctuated from the occasional thump of crates falling from a hundred feet in the air.

"Maybe this Somnex Four stuff is a drug," Garrus said. On Omega, he'd encountered an endless variety of narcotics. The Blue Suns mostly dealt red sand, but hey, maybe they were expanding their business options and appealing to a new demographic with Somnex Four.

"True. We're not far from Omega," Tali said, turning over one of the other crates.

"Empty. Empty. Big surprise there, another empty," Shepard said, counting the hollow thuds. She seemed a little frustrated to Garrus, but she quickly put the sentiment behind her. "Learn anything useful?"

"Hold on... these containers have pressure seals, Shepard," Tali said, tilting the open crate towards Shepard so she could see for herself. "They most likely contained some kind of gas."

"A large quantity of gas, used for medical purposes..." Thane ruminated aloud.

"Do you think it could be used as a weapon?" Garrus asked. "Like some sort of poison gas, or an airborn chemical?"

"That gives the Collectors a good reason to be on the ship," Shepard agreed, putting the pieces together.

"So they got what they came for," Garrus replied, nudging the nearest empty crate with his toe.

"And probably a little more. I'm guessing that being abducted wasn't part of the original deal," Shepard said.

"That means we're done, right? Case closed?" Tali wasn't too keen on spending much more time onboard the Platinum Jennet.

"No. We still don't know how they managed to take a whole ship full of armed mercenaries without any sign of conflict." Not to mention that the matter of the unused human armor was still unresolved.

"Perhaps once we activate the auxiliary power, EDI will be able to shed some light on the situation," Thane said. As soon as the words left his mouth, his flashlight flickered out and died. They heard the drell sigh.

Shepard was slightly amused at that. "Garrus, give him yours." He obeyed, a little reluctant to relinquish his light, especially to Thane. "Stay close to me." _Now that's an order I think I can follow. _"Move out, people. We still have a lot of ground to cover." Carrying one less light than they'd entered with, the four of them left the cargo hold to search for more clues about the fate of the Blue Suns mercenaries.

After a few minutes of fruitless searching, they were contacted by the second team. "Shepard, we've got something." Jacob's voice filled her ear. She put her finger on her comm link earpiece to hear him better.

"What is it?"

"Legion thinks he's found the power breaker box. He, uhh... wants to ask Tali a question."

Shepard exhaled sharply, then connected her hardsuit computer to Tali's, giving her access to the link established between her, Jacob, and Legion.

"Creator Tali, we are unfamiliar with this ship's systems controls," Legion admitted. Garrus found it a little unnerving that the geth seemed embarrassed by this. Geth weren't supposed to have feelings, as far as he knew. Legion went on to describe the structure in front of him, and, guided by Tali's patient yet obstinate direction, managed to make sense of the complex breaker box. Finally, he asked, "Red switch or blue switch?"

"Red," Tali confirmed.

"Affirmative." A slight pause, then a stiff, "Thank you."

Over the comm link, they could hear the sound of a switch being flipped. There was a slight humming sound, and Tali released a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding. Then, dim red lights came on, casting an eerie pallor over her squadmates.

"Good work. Now -" Shepard began. But the sound of guns firing loudly stopped her from continuing. Her eyebrows furrowed together. She turned slightly away from Thane, Garrus, and Tali, who were all watching with concerned expressions. "Taylor, give me a status report!"

"Hostile mechs have opened fire! I repeat, hostile mechs -" the transmission was broken up by the sounds of biotics.

"I'll throw you like a toy!" Shepard heard Jack yell from the other end.

"We're under attack, Shepard, and there's -" Jacob continued, and was cut short again. Everything faded away to the sounds of battle.

"Shit," Shepard cursed. Garrus, Tali, and Thane instinctively turned their backs on her, watching for mechs as she fiddled with her omni-tool. "EDI, what the hell is going on?"

"Shepard, the ship's secuirty system has initiated a total purge. Their mechanical defenses can't be shut off, and their targeting parameters include any life on the ship."

"How many of them are there?"

"Scans indicate multiple LOKI and FENRIS mech stations on the upper decks. There are also several YMIR mechs on the lower decks." Garrus swallowed hard. He couldn't hear the bulky YMIR mechs ambling around yet. Maybe they were defective. _Wishful thinking. _"Commander, there is a research lab onboard the Platinum Jennet. The captain's logs indicate that the Blue Suns were collaborating with a scientific team to create a powerful sedative."

"The Somnex Four," Garrus said, EDI's statement verifying his previous theory that the gaseous medical substance they'd found empty crates of in the cargo hold was indeed some sort of weapon.

"Can you get me the schematics?" Shepard asked EDI.

"Yes. Uploading them to your hardsuit computer now..."

Shepard looked at Tali. "I need you to get us a stable line to Jacob's team. Can you do that on the move?" If there were YMIR mechs powering up somewhere, there was really no time to waste sitting around to get a connection to the others.

"Err... move where?"

"We need to get to that research lab." There had to be more information about the Somnex Four sedative in those labs, and an explanation as to why the Collectors were interested in it. Hopefully, they'd also find out why the humans weren't wearing their armor when the ship was attacked. "Can you do it or not?" Shepard pressed Tali urgently.

"I can. It shouldn't take too long." Her omni-tool flashed and spun. "I can use the shipwide frequency signal to -"

"Don't talk. Just do."

They moved more quickly, guided to the labs by the schematics EDI had provided and fueled by the idea that somewhere very close were two-ton death machines, that had a missile launcher for one hand and a machine gun for the other. Garrus hoped they would be able to hear them coming, but it was more than likely that they would pop out from behind any corner. _I love surprises. _

Shepard led her team through winding corridors, the cramped spaces making her jittery. The combination of the red emergency lights from the ship and the glow of her orange omni-tool made everything seem cartoonish and other-worldly. She couldn't remember the last time she'd gotten exactly what she signed up for on a mission. There was always some twist, some wrench thrown into the plan that always ended up with them running through uncharted territory or going on a wild goose chase. She sincerely hoped that whatever they found in the labs wouldn't try to kill them. Or, if it did, that it would at least reveal what happened to the crew of the Platinum Jennet.

Speaking of, they weren't too far from the labs. The schematics showed that there was another cargo hold they had to get through. However, it didn't have the same layout as the other hold with the enormous towers of Somnex Four. This one was tiny in comparison; in addition to a few smaller units, there were three large containers with identical energy signatures. As an afterthought, she wondered what they held. "I think we're -"

_"TARGETING SYSTEMS: ONLINE." _

"Shepard! Get down!" She looked up from her omni-tool just in time to get flattened to the ground by Garrus. Over his shoulder, she saw Thane do the same to Tali, who yelped as he brought her down behind a mid-sized metal box. A hail of bullets sprayed the spot they'd been standing in milliseconds ago.

Garrus tried to shield Shepard's body with his own from the gunfire, but she wasn't having any of that. She threw up a biotic barrier in front of them, then rolled out from underneath Garrus. She broke into a sprint, hauling Garrus to his feet by grabbing onto the back of his armor as she did so.

Just as her barrier sputtered out, she pushed Garrus down behind a metal box identical to the one Thane and Tali were crouched behind. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw them laying down cover fire. While Garrus caught his breath and pulled out his sniper rifle, Shepard exposed her face for a moment to get a good look at the situation.

Two heavies, attention focused on Thane and Tali. One of their shields was already down, the other at about seventy five percent. LOKI's coming around the corner, spouting out polite warnings to surrender as their submachine guns snarled. Something caught her eye: a row of fire containment systems lined the wall directly behind the two mechs. Bingo.

"Stay here!" she shouted to Garrus over the thunderstorm of gunfire and mechanical whirring.

"Where are you -"

Taking one step back, Shepard gave herself a second to rev up her biotic energy before leaping forward and on top of her cover. She became a brilliant blue streak of light before Garrus's eyes, taking off like a shooting star. _That's new. _

She collided with the heavy mech's center of mass, slamming it onto its back and tearing away its extra armor. Tali and Thane took advantage of its vulnerable state and focused their fire on it. Garrus picked off at the steady stream of LOKIs that seemed to appear from thin air, occasionally sparing the extra second to use a tech overload. Still, he felt like he was barely making a dent in their unrelenting assault.

Shepard rolled to her feet, and, wielding her Eviscerator expertly in one hand, used a biotic pull to sling several of the explosive fire containment systems into the other mech. Her timing was just right: a storm of slugs was unloosed from her gun as the explosives came into contact with the mech's thick metal plating.

But she was standing too close when they exploded. The blast took out the mech's machine gun hand, but it also sent her sailing backwards. She smashed into the rack of remaining fire extinguishers, clattering to the floor and getting buried beneath them. The LOKI mechs turned at the movement, considering their target's new location. If those fire extinguishers went off on top of Shepard, they would have to scrape her messy remains off the walls.

Garrus wasn't about to let that happen. Switching out his sniper for the assault rifle, he vaulted over his cover and opened fire on the LOKIs, simultaneously waving his omni-tool to overload their systems.

_"Critical systems fai-fail-ure-ure-ure!" _the mechs bleated. Under the hammering fire of his Vindicator, the wobbly bipedals pitched forward and crumpled.

"Garrus!" Shepard yelled. She was getting to her feet a little unsteadily, rising from her would-be tomb of highly explosive material. She was up just in time to see the one-armed mech turn around, swing its missile launcher at her favorite turian, and fire.


	8. Chapter 8

Eight

Garrus was struck with the missile right in the side. His body flew into a metal storage unit, smashing into it with a hollow bang. He fell to the ground, dead.

"Garrus!" Shepard yelled again. She felt like crying and screaming and running to his broken body to hold his hand. But all of that had to wait, because the missile launching arm was trained on her.

Thane jumped from his cover, hurling a biotic warp at the hulking machine with all his might. Tali followed suit, dashing out to hit the target with a devastating tech explosion that sent the YMIR staggering forward. Unleashing raw biotic energy, like water surging forth from a cracked dam, Shepard charged at the mech that killed her best friend.

The impact was so forceful that the two-ton killing machine was knocked high into the air. It crashed into the opposite wall, disintegrating into so many circuits and wires. Shepard felt her knees start to buckle, but she didn't allow herself to collapse. She raced over to where the body of Garrus Vakarian lay.

Garrus pushed himself off the ground, holding onto a nearby metal railing for support. Strangely, he was not in as much pain as he expected to be after being struck with a missile.

"That's the second time in as many days," he muttered to himself. He wondered if the lack of pain was due to shock. He checked all his bones, looked for wet, blue patches where they weren't supposed to be. Everything seemed to be in order. Garrus picked up his assault rifle and went to regroup with the others.

"Garrus!" It was the third time Shepard had called his name, but now, it was in joy and relief instead of fear. "How the hell are you alive, you son of a..." She went on to insult several generations of his ancestors as she threw her arms around his neck in kind of a chokey way.

"Keelah se'lai," Tali said, glancing up at the ceiling in thanks to her god for keeping Garrus alive. There was no way he managed it by himself. Thane, too, had clasped his hands and bowed his head in prayer, murmuring to the goddess Arashu.

"Really, I'm fine. I was only knocked off my feet by the blast," Garrus reassured them. He noticed that Shepard's face looked much whiter than it usually did.

"You should've followed my order," she snapped. Garrus was taken back. For someone who'd just been hugging him, her voice was awfully sharp.

"What?" was all he could think to say. He wasn't really sure what she was referring to.

"I told you to stay put." She jabbed her finger towards where they had both been positioned earlier. "You should've stayed in cover."

"You were laying under a bunch of explosives. If I hadn't ran out, those mechs would've lit you up like the fourth of July." He'd heard Ashley Williams use the expression once before, when she'd finished off a geth armature with an incendiary grenade. He thought that the current circumstances were fitting, though he didn't understand what the significance of having four Julys was.

"I don't care. Never again. Are we clear?" Garrus stared into her eyes for a moment. Not because he was trying to get into a fight with her, like Jack was when she looked at Shepard. No, Garrus was trying to figure out what was going through her mind. He'd saved her life. She should be happy, grateful.

"Yes, Commander. I apologize," Garrus said. Shepard hated the wounded look on his face, but not as much as she would've hated the dead look of his entire body if he hadn't been miraculously saved by some stroke of incredible luck. She released the breath she'd been holding, her whole body shuddering as she did so.

"Commander." Thane pointed over her shoulder. "The research labs."

Shepard was reminded of the hot labs where they'd encountered rachni on Noveria as soon as she walked in. Garrus unholstered his assault rifle, his fingers flexing around the trigger. Evidently, he felt the same way. "Search the place for any kind of logs or surveillance footage that might explain what happened here. Tali, if you could get to work patching the comm signal..."

"Got it, Shepard."

"Yes, Commander."

"On it."

Most of the equipment in the research lab was – _surprise_ – medical equipment whose functions Shepard, Thane, and Garrus could only guess at. Shepard figured Mordin could make sense of it all, and tell her what the scientists were trying to do onboard the Platinum Jennet. That was assuming that Jacob's team would be able to make it through the mechs and get to their position.

Until then, they searched for logs and records of what happened. However, most of the records they found were like the equipment – useless to anyone without advanced knowledge of medicine. Frustrated, Shepard reshelved a box of empty data pads a little too enthusiastically, causing them to clatter onto the floor.

"Dammit," she breathed, kneeling down to pick them up. Garrus got on one knee to help her. Her eyes met his briefly. "I'm sorry," she said.

Garrus shrugged off her apology. "No use crying over spilled data pads." The expression brought a faint smile to her face, but it faded quickly.

"I mean about earlier. When I yelled at you." Their hands touched as they reached for the same data pad. Garrus let her have it.

"I wouldn't exactly call it yelling," he said coolly. Shepard sighed. She wasn't accustomed to Garrus's chilly tone or brusque deflection.

"I know. I was a bitch." There, she said it. She knew that her crew all thought it at some point or another, so she might as well go ahead and get it out in the open.

Thane glanced over from where he was rifling through a drawer full of petri dishes. Well, at least the commander admitted it.

Garrus's mandibles twitched in a smile. "Mhmm."

She took this as a sign to continue. "Look, the reason I got so, ummm... bothered, about you disobeying my order was because... I..." _Sheesh. Apologies do not come easy to this woman. _"Because I can't risk losing you," she blurted out.

Garrus put the last data pad into its slot, then took Shepard's hand in his. They remained kneeled on the floor, shielded from the view of Thane or Tali. "Did it ever occur to you that the same thing was going through my head?"

"What?"

"I didn't disobey your order because I disrespect you, Shepard. I disobeyed because I had to protect you," he said. Their faces were barely an inch apart. With his free hand, Garrus reached up and grabbed the back of her neck gently and pulled her closer still. "And maybe risking my life for you is my way of saying I would be very sad if I had to carry your chunky remains back to the ship in a dozen plastic bags." He was sort of making her hungry for spaghetti.

"I would've been fine," Shepard said quietly. But Garrus knew that he'd gotten his message through. "I had everything under control."

"Sure you did." Garrus didn't say it outright, but it became clear to Shepard that if he didn't like one of her orders, he sure as hell wasn't going to follow it. Of course, that was only if he felt that she was putting herself in unnecessary danger. Other than that, she pretty much had the right idea about this kind of stuff, and he wouldn't question her.

Cautiously, waiting for her reaction, he nudged her forehead with his, a gentle sign of affection. She pressed closer, knees inching over the hard floor to make contact with Garrus's knees. She was going to tell him something important when Tali announced she'd gotten a link to the other team. She let a small sigh escape her, before getting to her feet.

"What's your status, Jacob?" Shepard asked as she pulled Garrus up. He set the data pads in their intended location.

"Commander, I think we took care most of the mechs. No casualties," he reported.

"Good. We've found a research lab that we need Mordin to take a look at. I'm uploading the ship's schematics for you to follow," Shepard said, pacing the length of a sterile workbench.

"Shepard Commander, we have detected an alternate route to your position. Travelling through the maintenance corridors would reduce the time -" Legion interceded on the conversation.

"How long?"

"Eight minutes."

"Do it," she answered decisively. "Watch for mechs." And the link Tali had worked so hard to set up closed. She sighed.

"So, we have eight minutes to -" Tali stopped abruptly when Thane held a finger to his lips. They remained silent, listening with their heads cocked.

Movement. Thane was sure he'd heard it. Silently, he drew his heavy pistol and motioned at Shepard to follow him. On silent feet, he led her over to a blank wall. He pressed his ear against it, then nodded. He found a barely noticeable crack of space on the wall. Taking Shepard's hand in his, he let her fingers explore the seam.

It was a door. No doubt about it in her mind. She gestured for the others to stand back, giving them barely a moment before she flung open the secret door biotically.

Behind it stood a quaking salarian, hunched over to fit inside the hidden compartment. Garrus, Tali, and Thane drew their guns. Shepard left hers on her back.

"Get up," she ordered, polite yet firm. The salarian obeyed. Not that he had much of a choice.

The four of them saw that he was a sickly, weak thing, his sallow orangey skin covered in a slick sheen of nervous sweat.. He was still shaking when he looked up at them through the spaces between his fingers.

"Who are you?" Shepard demanded.

He didn't answer her question. Instead, one of his hands slid to cover his mouth, the other pointed at her in an accusatory manner. "Human," he whispered. "But they were supposed to take all of you."

"He must have hidden when the Collectors came aboard," Garrus said. In a way, Shepard was grateful for cowards. She could always count on them to run and hide, surviving the attack to tell the tale when she came along to investigate. She despised their spineless nature, but cowards had their uses.

"What happened? Why is everyone gone?"

"We gave them what they wanted. The drug, the test subjects... but they wanted more." The salarian hung his head, covered his face with his hands so that his words were muffled. "They took everything. Clouds of locusts, swarming everywhere before they could run away. No one was left."

Seeker swarms. That explained why there were no signs of combat around the ship. "So you made a deal with the Collectors to give them the Somnex Four and the test subjects. What else did they want?"

"They knew we had more of it, but the captain didn't want to give it to them. We told them we'd make more, but they were impatient... they didn't wait! They took it all, and took anyone who got in their way!" The salarian became hysterical. "All of them, gone, gone, gone..."

"Calm down!" Shepard said loudly over his cries. To their surprise, he did, snapping out of it as if being called from a trance.

He stared at her with wide eyes. "Human," he said again. Then he pointed to Garrus. "Soldier in blue."

"You've got to be kidding me. I am NOT one of those low-life Blue Suns," Garrus vehemently defended himself.

"They'll know you're here!" the salarian wailed suddenly. "They'll come back for you, find me here..." He stopped, and seemed to retreat into himself for a moment, his lips moving soundlessly as he spoke words only he could hear.

"The Collectors aren't coming back," Shepard insisted, trying to get the salarian to calm down so she could get some viable information out of him.

"They will. They always come for you, human." The salarian looked at the woman standing in front of him. Maybe, if he surrendered her to them, they would let him go. Yes. That would be his reward for turning her in. He didn't have to die.

Slowly, he reached into the pocket of his labcoat, turned away from them so they couldn't see him move. The woman was saying something to the blue soldier. Distracted. Now was his chance.

Garrus saw him pull something slim and handled out of his pocket. Something with a nozzle pointed at Shepard. She turned to face the salarian, ready to speak to him.

"GAHHH!" the salarian yelled, firing. Thane moved quickly, hitting his elbow to throw his aim off. But he hadn't stopped the trigger from being pulled; a greenish plume of gas shot out of the nozzle, permeating the air in a two meter radius. Thane punched the salarian in the throat, putting him down for the count.

Garrus pushed his nose into the crook of his elbow and held his breath, trying not to inhale any of the stuff. He was going to go ahead and make the assumption that it was Somnex Four.

Shepard coughed, doubled over. She'd gotten the worst of the exposure, since the gun went off practically right in her face. Garrus grabbed her and pulled her out of the dark cloud of green, uncovering his mouth and nose to haul her by the waist to clearer air.

Tali did the same for Thane, yet he wasn't coughing. In fact, the gas had no affect on him whatsoever. "I'm fine," he told Tali. "Perhaps the gas was ineffective."

Garrus felt the same way. He'd sneezed once, but that was it. The only one who was having a reaction to it was Shepard.

Clutching Garrus's arm, she struggled to remain upright. Her balance felt off, and every time she adjusted her feet, it felt like they were slipping out from underneath her. Her limbs felt disconnected and useless. Head growing heavy, her vision darkened.

"Stay with me, Shepard!" Garrus yelled into her ear. She didn't look like she heard him. _What is it doing to her? _

"I think..." Shepard began. She trailed off and became totally limp, her dead weight collapsing to the floor with a thunk.

"What's happening to her?" Tali asked, her voice shrill. The sight of her commander on the floor, eyes closed, not moving, scared her. It really scared her.

Garrus tore his gloves off with his teeth, then put his hands on her bare neck, frantically searching for a pulse. Tali held her breath as his fingers rested next to her jugular.

"Heart's beating," he said. So the gas hadn't stopped her heart. She was alive, for the moment. He rolled her onto her back, then yanked her into a sitting position by her shoulders. Thane got down on one knee and supported her head while Garrus put his head close to her face, listening. "Breathing, too. I think she's just unconscious."

"So she'll be alright?" Tali asked, twisting her fingers.

Garrus gently let her rest flat on the ground. "No way to tell until Mordin gets here."

Tali accessed the comm channel to Jacob, this time without difficulty. "You need to get down here, RIGHT NOW. Shepard's down, and -"

"Tali, we're here." Jacob was standing at the entrance, flanked by Jack, Mordin, and Legion. His eyes caught sight of Shepard's lifeless form. He strode towards her. "Is she -"

"Hold up," Garrus said, standing in his path. "She was hit with some kind of knockout gas. So far, she's the only one to have a reaction to it."

"The only human," Jacob realized, taking a few steps back out of the lab.

"Fuck this. I'm outta here," Jack said.

"There still could be traces of it in the lab," Thane said, thinking that Jack had the right idea. "Perhaps we should move her."

Garrus nodded. It wasn't doing her any good sitting around in the same fumes that had knocked her out. _By now, the gas must have dispersed through the whole lab. Maybe not in a high enough concentration to take out the others, but it sure as hell isn't helping them. _

They moved her quickly, with Thane's arms looped under hers, and Garrus supporting her legs. Even with the two of them dividing her weight evenly, Garrus couldn't lie: Shepard was _heavy. _

"Damn," he said under his breath as they hoisted her onto a table. "Dr. Solus, do you think you can take a look at her?"

But Mordin was already working quickly. "Vitals normal. Heart rate marginally elevated, seems to be settling..." he said, half to himself and half to the others, as he poked and prodded. He opened her eyelids. Garrus was unsettled by the sight of her unseeing eye. "Strong, species-specific sedative. Possibly combined with nerve toxin. Likely nonfatal. Will wear off with aid of adrenaline injections. Needs a few hours."

"Did you say species-specific?" Jacob asked. "That means that it was made just for humans, right?" He rocked back on his heels. "Sounds like the Collectors, alright."

"Speculation can wait," Thane interceded, surprisingly forceful. The softspoken drell usually just followed Shepard's orders, and tended not to voice his opinion. "We have to get Shepard back to the Normandy for treatment."

"No. We have to finish the mission," Garrus said, overriding his vote and taking charge himself. He was pretty sure he remembered Shepard saying that he was her first officer. "Mordin, can you make sense of any of their data?"

"Will transcribe details of experiment to OSD for later analysis. May take several minutes," Mordin replied, leaving Shepard's body and getting to work on the main console. Tali and Legion tag-teamed the hacking job, combining their decryption skills to get it done in half the time.

"You are willing to delay her treatment for the sake of the mission?" Thane asked Garrus. He wasn't questioning the decision; just the motive.

Garrus hesitated, his eyes falling to the already fading bruise on Shepard's face, where he'd hit her with a concussive round on Omega, before he'd known who she was. He wondered where he would be at that moment if that shot had actually killed her, as he thought it did. _Dead, probably. I wouldn't have made it out of the merc base without her. _"Yes," Garrus told Thane. "She's a soldier. Soldiers understand that sacrifices have to be made for the greater good."

"I hope it is worth it," Thane replied, implying that, if something bad did happen to her, Garrus would be the one to blame. _And maybe he would be right. Let's just hope it doesn't come to that. _

Besides, they had to stay. Who knew how many shipments of Somnex Four there were out there? Surely this wasn't the only one. There had been hundreds of crates in the cargo hold. It was up to them to make sure that what happened to Shepard, and what happened to the people onboard the Platinum Jennet, didn't happen to anyone else.


	9. Chapter 9

Nine

"Garrus, we've got something," Tali said, beckoning the turian over. He left Shepard's side to see what she was up to.

There was a flashing red message screen with two choices at the bottom. "What is it?"

"We've finished decrypting the data, but there's a catch. The data we intend to download is highly classified, and very, very well protected. If we so much as touch the files, a secondary security system will activate."

"A secondary system?" He glanced over his shoulder at the mess they'd created outside the research lab. "More mechs?"

"Yes."

There really wasn't much of a choice. Whatever that data contained, it must have been very important if it was protected so well. It was probably exacltly what they'd been searching for. "Give me a second to get the others together. When I give the signal, do it." Anyway, this time they'd be facing the mechs with a team of eight. Minus Shepard, so actually that was seven. And whoever was carrying her. So that made six. _Eh, good enough. _

Tali nodded. Legion blinked his light, and Mordin bobbed his head. "And, Garrus? We will need to hold this position while we wait for the download," Tali added in hurriedly as he started to walk away.

"How long?"

"Maybe five minutes? Ten, at the most." That was do-able. At least, he thought so.

He went over to the others and told them the plan.

"What happens when the download is complete?" Jacob asked.

Garrus hadn't really thought it through that far. "We leave."

"What if there are too many?"

"We kill them, then we leave." The plan seemed sound enough to them. They just hoped that there weren't so many of them that they couldn't leave.

They took up positions around the research lab, turning over tables to serve as cover. Thane helped Garrus drag Shepard behind his cover, where he'd be sniping. She was far enough from the front that she wouldn't be in too much danger, but also close to the door so that they didn't have to carry her for very long to get out.

Once everyone was in their places, Garrus said, "Do it, Tali."

She initiated the download.

_"Warning: security firewalls have been breached. Intruders detected. Commencing lockdown protocol," _the ship's VI informed them pleasantly. Metal shutters came down, blocking off their line of visibility to the cargo hold, as well as any exit routes.

"Shit," Garrus hissed. He thought they'd be defending the position from mechs on the outside. If they were inside the research lab with them, he'd have a hell of a lot harder time trying to keep Shepard safe.

"Officer Vakarian, my scans indicate that all mech units onboard the ship have activated," EDI informed Garrus over the comm. "LOKI, FENRIS, and YMIR mechs have powered up on all decks."

"What's the easiest way out of here?" As an afterthought, he clarified, "The one with the least mechs." He didn't know if the AI's idea of easy was the same as his.

"The maintenance tunnels that lead out to the bridge. From there, the path is clear to the airlock. For now."

"Can you do anything about these shutters? In the research lab."

"Yes. Be advised: hostile mechs converging on your position." Great. They'd been boxed in long enough for the mechs to surround them. "Opening the shutters."

"Please lay down your weapons," one of the LOKIs asked.

Jack pulled it biotically. "Watch the landing!" The others opened fire.

The seven of them didn't have much trouble dealing with the slow, stumbling LOKIs. It was simple enough to poke their heads out of cover while the machines were reloading and take out several at once. Yet as many as they were taking down, their numbers didn't seem to be thinning. Jacob was reminded of a Hydra – the monster that grew two heads in place of the one that was sliced off. And the LOKIs were getting closer and closer before they fell. Before long, they would be at the door of the research lab.

The real problems started when the mechs started coming from the other side. Everyone had their fire focused forward, and Garrus barely had time to react when a FENRIS, one of the dog-like mechs, came barreling through the back door. Holding his Viper by the wrong end, he swung at the mech and knocked it into the wall, managing to roll it onto its back. Abandoning the rifle, he wrapped an arm around Shepard's waist and sprinted forward, trying to stay low as he did so.

"Tali, cover me!" The FENRIS was regaining its bearings, and more were coming in after it. But Tali didn't hear him; she was directing her attack drone into the battle. Thane did hear him, though. He whirled his rifle around and picked off the mechs trailing Garrus, giving him time to slide Shepard into cover and pull out his assault rifle.

"We're being overrun!" Thane shouted to Jacob, who was stationed by the door.

"Yeah, you think so?"

It wasn't the time for sarcastic comments. "We have to get to the maintenance tunnels," Garrus called to them. Mordin, Legion, Tali, and Jack came in a little closer, sensing that they were about to get the hell out of there. Crouched behind the metal tables, they formed a loose circle, so that, between the seven of them, both entrances were covered. Garrus could hear dozens of mechs outside, all ambling closer and closer to the research lab.

"Easier said than done," Jacob said, leaning out of cover to throw a warp at a nearby LOKI.

"Jack and Jacob, you take point -" Garrus began giving orders. Jack lept to her feet immdiately. "I wasn't done yet!" But she ignored him.

The tattooed girl braced her legs and pumped her fist towards the small army of mechs. A biotic shockwave, the likes of which Garrus had never seen, emanated from her hand and knocked the mechs onto their backs. Like turtles on their shells, their legs moved uselessly in the air, unable to right themselves.

"What the hell are you idiots waiting for? Let's get out of here!" Jack shouted at them. _Now I see why Shepard keeps her around. _

They quickly got themselves together, checking for wounds. Legion had a little bit of that pale gray geth liquid spilling out of him.

"Err... are you okay?" Garrus asked.

Legion made one of those blaring, garbled noises that geth sometimes made when they weren't functioning at optimum capacity. Then, he said, "We are fine." Garrus would just have to trust him and hope that he made it back to the Normandy in one piece.

"Okay." He addressed the others. "Let's move out."

Jack and Jacob went out first, since they knew the way to the maintenance tunnels and they both had shotguns. Mordin followed, ready with his tech attacks at a moment's notice. Garrus came next, with Shepard slung over his shoulder, Thane and Tali on either side of him. Legion brought up the rear, his leaking subsided somewhat. Jacob shot one of the LOKIs that was on the ground, setting off a chain reaction of small explosions. _That takes care of that. _

They ran to the maintenance shafts as quickly as Garrus could move, trying not to jostle Shepard too much. Half of them were through the narrow door when Tali stopped.

"The OSD! It's still at the terminal!" she shouted, smacking a hand to her face mask. Jacob exhaled sharply, his fist clenching and unclenching nervously.

"Run," he said tersely. She was about to do just that when Legion stopped her.

"Creator Tali," he began. His statement was punctuated by another loud blurt of jumbled noise. "I will retrieve."

"I – Thank you, Legion." He didn't reply; just turned and bolted back to the research lab.

Legion was probably faster than Tali, but for some reason, Garrus didn't think that was why the geth volunteered to take her place. Maybe, planted somewhere deep down in Legion's subroutines, there was something that made him want to protect Tali, his quarian creator. Maybe, removed from all the other geth, the subroutines became more prominent. _Bucket of bolts or heart of gold? _It was an intruiging idea, but at the moment, Garrus had weightier things on his mind. Rather, on his shoulder.

They all went through the door to the maintenance tunnel to wait for Legion in relative safety, except for Tali. She was embarassed for leaving the OSD at the terminal, and felt a little guilty that someone had to go back and get it for her, the mistake costing them precious time. Speaking of, what was taking him so...

BOOM. A sound not unsimiliar to the one they'd heard when they had first boarded the Platinum Jennet resounded in the cargo hold like an sonic charge detonating. It came right from the research lab. Tali jumped. Jacob was barely able to restrain her from running to the noise.

Legion came sprinting out faster than he'd gone in, OSD clutched in one hand. Behind him, the windows of the research lab shattered. A YMIR heavy mech was hot on his heels, missile launcher prepped to fire. It took aim, then loosed a missile heading straight towards the geth.

Legion jumped forward at the last second, the missile exploding into the ground beneath his feet. The impact sent him careening forward, smacking into the ground with a loud thunk. The heavy advanced. Legion, sensing that he would not be able to get to safety in time, wound his arm back and threw the OSD into the air. Jacob caught it, and was about to close the door without a second thought when Tali barrelled past him.

"Legion!" she screamed. She ran to where the geth was sprawled, then grabbed him by arm and turned back, half dragging and half carrying him.

"Cover fire!" Jacob yelled. He might leave Legion out to die, but not Tali. Thane and Mordin moved into the doorway, drawing the mech's attention away from the headstrong quarian.

"Enjoy," Mordin said, sending an incineration attack into the mech. It was distracted long enough for Tali to shove Legion to safety and for Jacob to slam the door behind the two of them. A missile hit the metal door, the force of it knocking Jacob forward.

"Are you hurt?" Tali asked the geth. He glanced down at his legs. The backs of them were slick with the gray substance.

"Negative. Geth do not feel pain," he answered, standing up. "Retrieval was successful."

Jacob handed her the OSD. She stared at the small device sitting in her open palm. She didn't move or say anything.

"Good work, Legion," Garrus said. He picked Shepard up with one arm looped between her legs and the other tucked behind her head. This way, her weight was evenly spread across his shoulders. It occurred to him that it was the same way she carried him out of Omega when he was on death's door. And he'd be carrying her through maintenance tunnels, just as she'd done for him. When she woke up, he could tell her that she could consider that particular debt repaid. _Now I only have to repay the other nine hundred ninety nine times she saved my life. _"Let's get out of here."

They moved through the narrow tunnels slowly, since the mechs couldn't reach them there. Besides that, there were about a hundred pipes or beams jutting out that Garrus occasionally bumped Shepard's head on. Thane followed close behind, providing a biotic cushion where it was needed.

"Bitch really outta drop a few pounds," Jack said when she saw Garrus struggling up a steep staircase.

"At the moment, I'm inclined to agree," he said through gritted teeth, grunting as he twisted sideways to fit her through the opening. Thane's biotics flared up like a blue helmet to protect her head.

"Want me to take the weight off?" Jack offered. Garrus's mandibles flared as he panted under Shepard's weight.

"Don't think you could handle the load, half-pint."

She laughed. _Destroying things does seem to put her in a better mood. _"No way am I carrying her huge ass up these stairs. Why don't I take her weapons?" She was walking backwards up the stairs, moving with ease in the cramped quarters. "C'mon, I bet that grenade launcher weighs like fifteen pounds."

"You're right, Jack." Garrus was surprised to hear Thane's voice come from behind him. "I'll hold onto them for her." Aha. Jack was just trying to get her hands on the big guns. Garrus paused while Thane reached up and slid the massive thing off her back. "Why don't you carry her pistol?" He suggested, shouldering the weapon. Garrus felt like smiling. _Saved by the drell. _

Jack narrowed her eyes. "When I steal the ship and kill everyone, I'm going to life support first, douchebag."

"How considerate of you, Jack."

"Blow me."

"Hey," Jacob called from the front. For a moment, Garrus thought that he was going to reprimand Jack, but he didn't. "I think we're getting close to the bridge."

Good. Garrus was getting sick of the claustrophobically tight quarters, and Shepard's weight was threatening to make him collapse. He kept thinking back to his own rescue on Omega. _How in the galaxy did she get me from my base all the way to her ship? _He was pretty sure that he was heavier than she was. It was just further proof that Commander Shepard excelled where others failed.

Sure enough, they'd come to the end of the cramped corridors. A doorway led out onto the bridge. It reminded Garrus of the layout of one of the turian dreadnoughts he'd served on, early on in his service in the military. Even when it wasn't dark and abandoned, the bridge wasn't much to look at. But it served its purpose, and that was all that really mattered anyway.

They rested for a moment once they got out of the maintanence walkway, stretching and letting their nerves settle. There were no mechs where they were, since Jacob and his team had cleared them out when the security alarm first went off. Garrus kicked aside some broken parts and slid Shepard to the ground, slumped against the wall.

It was weird to see her so still. She usually moved around a lot, shooting people, telling people what to do, kicking things over with her big heavy feet. He didn't really like this... blankness. He brushed a hair that had come loose from her ponytail. But she did look peaceful. And honestly? Garrus had considered snatching the gun thing that the salarian shot her with, just so he could force her to take a nap every now and then. He wouldn't even have to sing her a lullaby.

Of course, he wouldn't shoot her with it right in the middle of a battle. That would just be irresponsible.

"Alright, let's go. We're almost at the end," Jacob ordered.

Garrus was about to pick Shepard back up when he heard a noise that made his heart jump into his throat. _"TARGETING SYSTEMS: ONLINE." _That was all the warning they got before a missile whizzed down the corridor.

Luckily, that warning had been just enough for everyone to jump out of the blast radius. Garrus put himself between Shepard's unprotected head and the explosion, covering his own face with an arm. His shields went down a bit, but it was nothing to worry about. What was worrisome, though, was the YMIR mech clunking down the corridor. It had come up the same set of stairs that Tali, Thane, Shepard, and Garrus himself had gone down at the beginning of their mission. They'd come full circle, it seemed.

The seven of them opened fire on the mech, chipping away at its defenses, taking down its shields bit by bit. But it was getting too close. At the rate they were going, the mech would be upon them before they could take it down.

They'd have to hit it really hard two or three times to make a dent in it.

Garrus turned to his comrades. "Tali, Legion, Mordin: hit it with a tech attack on my mark!" They acknowledged the order. He turned to Thane, Jack, and Jacob. "I'll give you a second signal to use your biotics." The mech pounded closer. They nodded in time with its footfalls.

Garrus waited for a pause in the hammering of machine gun spray, then yelled, "NOW!" Four omni-tools waved in the air simultaneously, overloading the mechs shields with a burst of electricity. It shot another missile, this one careening over their heads into the ceiling. Some debris landed on Jack, causing her to erupt into a violent string of swearing. "GO!" he shouted to the biotics.

Three warps sounded, smacking into the mech in unison, bringing its critical systems dangerously low. But it wasn't finished yet. Garrus almost reached for his assault rifle, but the mech was too close. Even now, almost dead, the combination of their bullets wouldn't do the job in time.

They needed a grand finale.

"Thane! Grenade launcher!" Garrus shouted over the hail of machine gun fire. Thane pulled it off his back and tossed it into the air in one fluid movement.

Garrus watched it soar in slow motion. One of the many things that was currently troubling him was the fact that he'd never used a grenade launcher, or anything much bigger than his Widow, before. He knew which end the explosive stuff flew out of. Well, he was pretty sure.

But then, an image struck him, like a divine lightning bolt from above. It was one of Shepard, right after she'd pushed a couch between him and certain death on Omega. Barely lucid, blinking his own blood out of his eyes, Garrus had looked up at her, for the sole reason that he wanted her to be the only thing he saw when he died. Spirits, she'd looked so beautiful, with her hair pulled back and fire in her eyes. He'd never wanted to live so badly.

But to the point: he'd watched her fire the grenade launcher. He'd seen where the safety switch was, where the trigger was, and he knew which end went boom. Hopefully, the thing didn't need reloading.

He caught it, felt its alien weight in his hands, and bumped the safety to "off." He waited for the rattle of the machine gun to cut out, then he jumped out of cover, completely exposing himself. The mech raised its missile launching arm. Garrus squeezed the trigger. _Not this time. _

Boom. Boom. Boom. Three consecutive shots, a short pause, then one last BOOM. That was the mech crumpling, crashing into the ground. Target eliminated.

Garrus was blown back by the mech exploding into pieces. He hit his head on a command station on the other side of the room, his armor sparking against a metal grate on the ground. Thane and Tali were at his side, their faces blurry spots in his vision. He blinked a couple times, his visor refocusing, and their features sharpened into looks of relief.

"You reckless _bosh'tet_, I thought you were done for good," Tali said, using the insult affectionately. She and Thane helped him to his feet, supporting him on either side.

"Luck seems to be on your side today," Thane said, recalling the instance not so long ago when Garrus walked away from another heavy mech's attack with little more than a few bruises.

"Daaaaamn, Blue," Jack said, inventing a nick name for the turian. "Ain't you hot shit." And she kind of meant it.

Garrus steadied himself on Tali's shoulder, taking a few careful steps forward.

"Now _that's _what I'm talking about," Jacob said, fist-bumping Garrus. They were all pretty sure that without Garrus, they'd all be shredded to ground beef by the mech's machine gun. Or pounded into meat smoothies by its missile launcher. Garrus had almost single-handedly taken them off the menu.

And, of course, Shepard was out cold while it happened. _Well, she's just gonna have to sit __through the epic retelling of this moment at the mission debrief. _

"Just doing my job," Garrus said humbly. He lost his balance, but passed it off as a charismatic bow. "Now let's get off this hellhole before more show up."


	10. Chapter 10

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Mass Effect. Bioware owns Mass Effect!

**AN: **Thanks for reading :) Leave me a review! If you like it, let me know. If you don't, tell me why. Feedback is much appreciated. Enjoy the story!

Ten

Commander Shepard blinked awake. Petrified, all she could do was stare up at the ceiling. She was in a medical lab of some sort, that much she could tell. But her vision was still blurry, as if her eyes had been closed for a very, very long time...

There was a gentle, lulling hum that came from across the room, a synthetic tune with a sweet melody. Grimacing, Shepard turned her head to see what was making the sound.

It was Legion. They were in the med bay on the Normandy, and Legion was singing to her. The music abruptly cut off when he noticed that she was awake. "Shepard Commander."

"What are you doing?"

Legion's head light dimmed for a moment as he tilted it slightly downward. "We were told by the Vakarian Officer that such noise, while sleeping, is beneficial to some species of organics. We reached the consensus that in doing so, we were assisting in Shepard Commander's recovery, in order for her to attend the mission debrief -"

"Oh, leave the woman alone, Legion." Shepard hadn't noticed Kasumi sitting on top of a supply crate in the corner of the room. She nimbly hopped off her perch. "Why don't you fetch Garrus? He probably won't be too happy that Shepard woke up just when he'd left the room."

"Very well," Legion said with a hint of resignation.

Kasumi jumped up onto the bed next to the one Shepard was laying in, swinging her legs. Shepard propped herself up on her elbows, uncomfortable at the thought of having a conversation with someone while laying down, but Kasumi held up her hand.

"Please. Don't get up on my account," she said with a smile. "You should take it easy for a while."

"How long has it been?" Shepard hoped she didn't say weeks, or months. She couldn't lose that much time. Not again.

"Hmm... a day and a half. Around thirty-two hours, I think."

Relieved, Shepard sank back into her pillows. It was more than she would have liked, but it still could have been so much worse. The last thing she remembered was that unstable salarian gassing her, then falling into a deep darkness as black as space itself. Gasping and coughing for every breath, it had felt exactly the same as her death, suffocation by suit rupture in a vacuum.

Waking up to Legion's lullabies on her own ship thirty two hours later, as opposed to fighting her way out of the Lazarus facility two years after her death and being told her friends were out of reach? Yeah, Shepard decided that things weren't really that bad.

"So, what happened?" Shepard needed the details on the mission's conclusion. Whether or not they'd accomplished anything, or if it was a big waste. She hated the black holes in her memory.

"Ooh, well, when Garrus came off the shuttle carrying your sleeping body in his arms, me and Kelly nearly _died._" Shepard had no idea that they woud be so worried about her. "He was so manly, and strong looking." Oh. Nevermind, then. "And it was so adorable! He wouldn't leave your side for a minute, even after Dr. Chakwas said you just had to sleep it off." Kasumi put her chin on her folded hands. "But from what I heard about the mission from Tali, he's a total badass. Definitely your type, right, Shep?"

She raised an eyebrow at her friend. "Kasumi, how much coffee have you had to drink today?"

"About four cups." Shepard gave her a look that plainly said _do you really think that was such a great idea? _Kasumi shrugged, bouncing off her seat and circling around the bed. "Well, Garrus wasn't the only one who was worried about you. Besides, I like coffee."

Shepard smiled, leaning against her pillows so she was sort of sitting up. "You're telling me that you and Legion stayed up for thirty-two hours straight, just to babysit me, with Garrus?"

"Well, there's not exactly much going on, since Commander Sleepypants over here is taking a vacation. Though I suppose that's going to change once we get to Illium."

"Wait... Illium?" Shepard balked. "Why are w- Who gave that order? This is still my ship," Shepard said. She kicked the blankets off, glad to see that she was fully dressed in her uniform, because she had a ship to run, with or without the aid of her pants.

"Crap. Forget I said anything. Seriously, Shep, I don't think you should be up..." Kasumi had to steady her commander as she vaulted out of bed.

"Where my boots at?" she asked, her toes curling. Cold floor. Bare feet. Not good.

"I, uhhh..."

Shepard let Kasumi go and looked around the med bay for her boots. "C'mon. You're either with me, or against me. Pick a side, Goto."

Kasumi admired Shepard's determination. The woman wanted her boots, and she wanted them now. "They're under the bed."

"Aha!" Sneaky little things. Shepard shoved her feet into them and laced them up in record time, hands weaving back and forth expertly. Once she was done, she headed towards the door of the med bay, intending to have a long conversation with Lawson...

"Shepard!" Grunt had almost knocked into her, entering the doorway from the other side and effectively blocking her way. He chuckled loudly in her ear as he clapped her on the back. Over his shoulder, she saw Garrus. She mouthed a hello, then gave a questioning look at Grunt. She wouldn't have thought the two would become buddies. Garrus shrugged, obviously amused. God, she was glad to see him. The krogan grinned, a terror inducing experience for most people. "You're awake. Want to hear a joke?"

"Sure, Grunt."

"What do you call it when Commander Shepard takes a geth ship?"

"I dunno."

"A death collective!" He nudged her conspiratorially as she laughed, only faking it a little bit. It was kinda funny. "Get it? Because 'geth' sounds like 'death'? Ha! The quarian said you'd like it."

"We fail to see how this constitutes as humorous," Legion said, gliding in through the narrow space that was left between Grunt and the doorway.

Grunt waved him off. "Machines. No sense of humor." He turned his attention to Shepard, grabbing her hand and giving it a hard shake. She thought her wrist might have broken. "It is good to see that my warlord has not been killed by a weak salarian. Come get me when there are things to kill," he said, backing out of the med bay.

"Will do, Grunt."

Legion followed him out. Shepard heard him say, "Grunt Urdnot, we are collecting data pertaining to..." She felt like smiling. That was one conversation she'd like to hear the end of. But at the moment, she had other things on her mind.

"Hey, Vakarian," she said, greeting her friend.

"Shepard," he returned with a nod. "Not sure you should be on your feet just yet."

"I tried to stop her, but she wouldn't listen," Kasumi said, appearing from behind Shepard. "Anyway, I'd better go tell Jacob to hold off on that mission debrief."

"There's really no need -"

"She's right. You should get off your feet, at least for a little while," Garrus insisted, nodding towards the rumpled bed towards the back. That bed was surely a little lopsided because Garrus had sat on the edge of it for so long.

Kasumi brushed by Shepard and walked out the door, not so subtley bumping into Garrus on her way out, forcing him a little closer to the commander. She pretended not to notice anything.

"I'm fine, really," Shepard said, though she barely resisted as Garrus led her back to the bed by her arm.

"Sit," he ordered her, only doing so himself after she had.

"Fine." He could tell she was getting a little impatient. He would be too, if he'd fallen asleep in the middle of a mission and no one was telling him what was going on. Still, he wasn't sure it was safe for her to be up and about. He didn't want her passing out or anything during the debrief. If nothing bad happened after a few minutes, he'd take her up to the comm room.

"How are you feeling?" he asked her, avoiding the topic of what happened during the rest of the mission until he could give her the full story.

"Like the morning after shore leave."

"So hung over that people get drunk just by standing next to you?"

Shepard laughed, and Garrus got a good look at the vulnerable pink inside of her mouth. "Basically, yeah." As her laughter subsided, she smoothed back her hair, and looked at Garrus, in the way that would have made anyone besides him uncomfortable. Some people were intimidated by her direct manner, but he liked having her undivided attention. Though, he'd admit, it was more than a little intimidating. "Thanks."

"I always have a few good jokes on hand. Maybe not as witty as Grunt's, but how's a guy supposed to compete with the perfect krogan?"

She cracked up again, the beginnings of a headache setting in, but she didn't mind so much. Talking to Garrus made the pain less prominent. "Not what I meant."

"Perhaps you were referring to when I dragged – I mean, gently carried you back to the ship. Really, it was no trouble at all. In fact, I'm a little concerned. You should consider putting on a few pounds." He poked her in the ribs. "You're looking kind of bony."

She had just enough strength to retaliate, flicking a sensitive, exposed spot on his neck. "That, and for staying with me for thirty-two hours while I was out."

Garrus shrugged. "No big deal. And, anyway, I was in here getting treated myself for a while."

The playfulness left Shepard. "What happened? Is it serious?"

He waved it off. "Slight concussion. Nothing to be worried about, Dr. Chakwas cleared me almost immediately. I'm fit for duty."

Though there was still a trace of worry on her face, she let out a sigh of relief. "Good." She bumped her knee against his. "You always were hard-headed." She was thinking back to the mission, when she'd told him to stay in cover and he'd charged out after her.

"Well. Your skull isn't too pliable, either," Garrus said. He locked his legs on either side of hers, thinking they'd make a game out of it when she tried to escape the bind.

But she didn't. Instead, she stood up suddenly. With his legs still around hers, she ended up standing very, very close to him. He could feel her breath on his face. It smelled like cough syrup and spearmint.

"I guess that's a good thing, since we're always butting heads," she said quietly.

Garrus knew that humans used the term "butting heads" to describe when two people were in disagreement over an issue, but her words had a double meaning. To turians, placing his forehead against hers would indicate that they were romantically involved. He swallowed hard.

The question was: did she know that?

Maybe, maybe not. He let his hand trail up her arm, coming to rest at the back of her neck so he could guide her in gently and put their heads together. "A really, really good thing." And he was thinking about the turian meaning.

They stayed like that for a moment, holding each other in the med bay, before they had to let go.

"Commander Shepard, Operatives Taylor and Lawson are ready for you in the debriefing room," EDI said, her blue spherical avatar taking form at a terminal mounted on the wall.

Shepard drew away, and Garrus let her, even though he really, really didn't want to. "Got it, EDI. Tell them I'll be up in a sec."

"Yes, Shepard." The avatar blinked out.

"Well," she said. There was a smile on her face, but she didn't look happy. To Garrus, she seemed anxious and unsure. A new look for her. "Are you coming, or am I going to have to ride in the elevator by myself?"

He followed her into the elevator without hesitation, after that. He pressed the up button and said, "You won't ever have to do it alone again. I'll see to it myself."

Shepard glanced up at the elevator level counter above the doors before looking up at him. Although she'd never admit it to any one, she secretly hated riding it by herself. She was glad she could count on Garrus to accompany her.

Up on the bridge, on their way to the comm room, Shepard noticed Kasumi talking with Kelly. When she and Garrus exited the elevator, and he put his hand at the small of her back as he leaned in to whisper something, the two of them started giggling madly, like gossipping schoolgirls. Shepard tried to silence them with one of her piercing glares, but it didn't have much effect, since their heads were both turned towards each other and hidden behind their hands. She caught the end of one of Kelly's hushed exclamations: "... sooo good together!"

Her cheeks lit up with a soft pink hue, and she glanced at Garrus to see if he'd heard. He led her through the armory, meeting her gaze almost by accident. "What?"

They were just outside the comm room. She'd have to deal with those two later, as well as her feelings for Garrus. "Nothing," she said. They had a mission to debrief.


	11. Chapter 11

Eleven

The automatic doors whooshed open for Garrus and Commander Shepard.

"Alright, let's get..." Jacob and Miranda were standing suspiciously close together. They pulled apart quickly, and when Miranda turned, Garrus saw that there was a holo pad in her hand. "...started," Shepard said, also noticing their proximity.

_Interesting. _Garrus filed the information away for potential future blackmail, mostly intended for Miranda. _You never know when this kind of stuff will come in handy. _

"Yes, Commander." Jacob snapped off a sharp salute, definitely sucking up a little.

Miranda straightened, setting the data pad down behind her. She looked hesitant for a moment, her eyes darting back and forth between her own shoes and Shepard's, before she blurted out, "Glad to see that you're okay, Commander." She closed her mouth quickly, like she'd regretted ever opening it.

"Thanks, Lawson. Glad to see that the ship's still here."

Miranda's full lips twisted into a smile, her eyes lighting up. Her posture eased somewhat, and her hand perched on her hip. "Collector's didn't show up. Though, if they did, I would've left you the shuttle."

Garrus thought that the comment seemed borderline mutinous, but Shepard didn't seem to think so. She dipped her head slightly. "It's good to have someone I can count on."

_Count on her to abandon you at the first sign of danger_, Garrus thought uncharitably. Something about the Cerberus agent rubbed him the wrong way. Maybe it was her unnerving perfection, or the fact that she considered herself Shepard's right hand when the position obviously belonged to him. He could understand why Tali disliked her so.

Jacob got to business. "Shepard, after Tali and Legion hacked through the firewall, EDI was able to gain access to security camera footage from around the ship. We've pieced some of it together to give you a recap of what happened after you were..." he trailed off.

Shepard finished for him. "Taken down. Got it. What about footage from before we came?"

Jacob wanted to tell her to be patient, and to take it one step at a time. But that was like telling a krogan to put a napkin in his lap and use a fork at the dinner table. "We can show you that, after the mission recap."

"Okay. Start it up."

The lights dimmed, and Garrus started to feel tired. He hadn't really slept since before the mission, when he'd shared Shepard's bed. It seemed like ages ago.

The projection table showed them an image of the research lab, from the view of a camera in the corner of the room. The clip began when the salarian pulled out his weapon and fired it at Shepard. Garrus heard her draw a sharp breath when she watched the events unfold. He knew that she was probably thinking that she could have prevented it, that she should've seen him go for the gun. _Nothing to do about it now. _

Because there was no audio to accompany the video, the footage reminded Shepard of the ancient black and white flickering vids that were the first ever motion pictures. She felt a strange detachment towards the events, trying to fit them in to the black space in her memory. She had a hard time believing it had all happened.

It felt like she was watching a horror movie when Legion ran back into the research lab for the OSD. The security camera showed the YMIR mech waiting behind a corner while the geth unsuspectingly disconnected the portable device from the main terminal. Something caught his eye on one side of the room, in plain sight of the mech. He approached it, slowly and deliberately picking it up. Shepard saw that it was a slightly dented Viper sniper rifle. She wanted to shout at Legion, tell him to run away before the mech started shooting, but then she remembered it had already happened. She felt strangely powerless as she watched the mission recap.

Her favorite part was at the end, when the YMIR mech came down the hallway towards her team. After the beautifully executed attack coordination, she watched as Thane tossed her grenade launcher to Garrus, who caught it, spun around, and fired off three rounds, the massive weapon bucking in his hands. She was impressed. The first time she'd used the grenade launcher, the thing had jumped right out of her grip.

The last few seconds of the clip played out, and Garrus felt Shepard's elbow in his rib, nudging him. Being leader of his own team of vigilantes had obviously payed off. The Garrus that Shepard knew from two years ago was a rule-breaking C-Sec officer who was itching for some real action. The one that stood at her side now was a competent, level-headed soldier that could be counted on to step in when Shepard was out. She glanced at him, trying to be discreet, but he noticed, and winked at her. Shepard held his gaze for a moment longer before turning to the other two and clearing her throat.

"What about before we got there? What happened with the Collectors?"

Jacob grimly entered a command into his omni-tool. "Some of it is... hard to watch." Miranda grabbed the holo pad from where she'd set it down and suddenly became engrossed in its screen.

Shepard felt a knot forming in her stomach. But she didn't let it show. "Play it."

Garrus wasn't looking forward to seeing the vid for a second time. Garrus wanted to warn her, prepare her for what was coming, but he shut up. The pictures were worth a thousand words, and not a single one of them was good.

It started off with footage from the camera in the crew's quarters. There were a group of mercenaries, batarian, turian, and human, sitting at a table in their normal clothes, playing a card game. A few seconds passed and nothing happened.

"What am I supposed to be looking at, here?" Shepard said.

Garrus shushed her. She glared at him, but it was too dark in the room for him to notice. She hated all this wait-and-see-for-yourself crap.

But a moment later, she did see for herself. A dark, cloudy substance began to leak into the room through the air vents. The humans in the group stood up, their hands over their mouths, moving towards the door. None of them got very far. They began dropping like flies, racked with coughing as they rolled on their backs. One of the humans on the floor reached out to his turian comrade, his fingers groping for his feet, gasping for aid. But the turian just slowly backed away, watching the humans squirm and twist like worms flushed out of the ground after a heavy rain, left out in the sun to shrivel and die.

Garrus looked over at Shepard. She betrayed no emotion, her features set in hard lines.

The non-humans in the room left, returning a few minutes later clad in blue armor. By this time, the humans were totally motionless and had completely succumbed to the effects of Somnex Four. The armored mercenaries piled the vulnerable humans onto a cart, then wheeled them down the hallway.

The single frame cut to four square frames, from different parts of the ship. The same thing was happening in each frame. At least fifty human mercenaries were being taken to the cargo hold next to the research lab, by their own teammates.

As far as Shepard was concerned, all mercenaries were dogs. But that was what bothered her: they were all the same. No one deserved to be betrayed by the other. So what the hell was going on?

There was a two hour time lapse in the video, then it cut to when the Collectors entered the MSV Platinum Jennet. The entire crew, including a group of salarian and asari scientists in white coats, was assembled in the hold. There were a few crates of Somnex Four.

The captain of the Platinum Jennet exchanged a few words with one of the Collectors, gesturing back at the mass of human bodies and the gas that was their undoing. The other Collectors started to take them away, moving in a slow march, as if in a funeral procession. The spokesperson of the Collectors watched, unmoving. Once everything was taken, the mercenaries shifted about uneasily. They were probably wondering why the Collectors weren't leaving.

Without warning, seeker swarms flooded the room. The Blue Suns fired their weapons, aiming at everything and hitting nothing. It was all over in a few seconds. The mercenaries were no match for the stasis fields. Then, in the same scrupulous manner, the Collectors took the mercenaries, and the scientists, too. For what sinister purposes, Shepard could only guess at.

The last thing the Collectors took was the remainder of the Somnex Four onboard. Which turned out to be a majority of the stock. The final frame of the vid was of the Collector spokesperson, sweeping the deck with his eyes, then turning his back on the Platinum Jennet and walking out.

"Commander, we have a captain's log from six hours prior to the beginning of the clip," Jacob said, his voice jolting her out of her thoughts.

The security camera angle disappeared from the projection table, replaced by an image of the turian, the captain of the ship. He was wearing blue armor. Shepard could hear Garrus's mandibles clicking.

_"This is Captain Janas of the MSV Platinum Jennet, local time eight hundred hours. Too goddamn early, if you ask me," _the log began. The turian's voice was raspy, like sandpaper over gravel. _"But I figure I should record one of these things before we go through on that deal with the Collectors." _

Janas scratched under his chin. _"Those bug give me the creeps. Not sure I trust 'em. 'Course, this isn't about trust. When they first approached us with their proposition, I was a little worried. I couldn't exactly hand over all the humans in the crew without shedding some blood, you know? But the scientists came up with a solution to that one." _He pressed on. _"That drug of theirs, the Somnex Four, was specifically designed to take out a lot of humans at once without a fight. It's the perfect tool to use against large groups of them. Take 'em by surprise, knock 'em out before they can resist, and you don't even have to do any of the work. They never suspect a thing." _

The captain ran a talon over his fringe. _"The Collectors offered us a lot of money to get their hands on some of the drug. The thing is... if they start selling it to other mercs, or even slavers, we got competition on our hands. Giving up the trade secret is bad for business. So... I'm thinking we give them a few crates, 'cause they already know we have it. But this human selling thing. It could get big. They're offering a lot of money, and I mean a lot. With the Somnex, we could take, like, a hundred of them at once. Maybe more." _The turian paused, then looked right into the camera lense, as if he were talking directly to Shepard. _"It's just business, you know?" _

"Records indicate that the scientists made a deal with the Blue Suns that if they were provided with a research lab and security, they would develop a drug that did exactly what the mercenaries needed. They were also supposed to receive a cut of the money the Collectors were to pay," Miranda said once the audio cut off.

Shepard ran through all the facts in her mind. "So the Blue Suns made a deal with the Collectors about a few humans and a drug that can put them to sleep instantly. Why do they need the Somnex Four when they have seeker swarms?"

It was a question that had puzzled Garrus himself after watching the videos. But he'd come up with a theory. He just wasn't sure Shepard would like it. _Like it or not, she's gotta hear it. _"The Somnex Four wasn't for the Collectors to use, Shepard. They intended to distribute it to mercenaries, like the Blue Suns, to get them to take humans, in exchange for promises of wealth," Garrus said.

This was what it had come to, then. Crewmates stabbing each other in the back for a few creds. It was sickening. And the sickness would spread. Once there were no humans on the ship to hand over to the Collectors, the mercenaries would be sure to look for more elsewhere.

No doubt that the Collectors were already recruiting new minions to fetch humans for them. They'd taken everyone onboard the Platinum Jennet, and they needed someone else to gas innocents and accumulate more humans. Even as they spoke, the Collectors were making their move. All those hours she'd been asleep...

And now they had their hands on a weapon that would have mercenaries and slavers alike scrambling to the nearest human colony. "We have no time to lose."

"Agreed," Lawson spoke up. "EDI found a shipping transcript of places the Blue Suns intended to send the Somnex Four. The Illusive Man has dispatched teams to all of the locations, except Illium. He says we're to head there ourselves."

Illium: the business central of the Terminus Systems, where justice and morality were foreign concepts, where power was measured in credits and information. If the shipment of Somnex Four got too spread out, there would be no stopping the chaos that would ensue.

While Shepard didn't like the Illusive Man commandeering her vessel, she would've chosen to go to Illium herself. Besides, Shepard's former teammate, Dr. Liara T'Soni, would be able to provide them with information that would surely aid their quest in seeking out the Somnex Four. "What's our ETA?"

"We hit the relay in two days."

Two days. That was a long time. But there was nothing that could be done about it.

"Okay. Good work. Now get back to your stations," Shepard said firmly. Miranda and Jacob did so, glancing over their shoulders as they left.

Shepard remained inside the comm room. She wrapped her fingers around the edge of the projection table, squeezing the metal until her knuckles turned white.

"Shepard." Garrus put a hand on her shoulder. She didn't notice that he hadn't left. "Are you okay?" She didn't seem the least bit shaken up over the video. He'd been expecting some kind of reaction. Anger, disgust, or a fierce promise of retribution.

But this calm detachment. It scared him. He wasn't sure how long she'd last if she kept bottling up every emotion inside. He glanced at the well defined muscles of her arm, at the orange cybernetics beneath her skin. The cracks were starting to show.

"Fine, Garrus." She stood up straight, releasing her death grip on the railing. "Get some rest, okay? This isn't over yet."

Garrus wanted to stay and get her to open up. But she was clearly unwilling to talk. Even he knew enough about human body language to know that. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and her eyes kept darting to the door. "I will. If you do."

She exhaled and tossed her hair over her shoulder, and out of her face. "I had my thirty-six hours. Someone's gotta keep Lawson from declaring herself captain."

"True enough. But still." Two days was a long time to go without sleep. Garrus was on his way out, automatic doors at the ready, when he stopped and turned back. "We're all in this together, okay?"

"Got it, Vakarian." She was brushing him off. That was fine with him, as long as she knew she had other options besides trying to balance the weight of the galaxy on her own shoulders. "Now, seriously. Get your ass out of here so I can do my job already." She was smiling, though, and Garrus took that as a sign not to be offended by her statement.

"Alright, alright. You'll come get me if you need me?"

"You bet." Comforted by that thought, Garrus left her.

When the doors had closed, Shepard turned her back on them and settled her elbows on the edge of the projection table. She put her head in her hands and closed her eyes.

"Commander, you've received a new message at your private terminal," Chambers announced as Shepard strode out onto the bridge.

"Right. Thanks," she said, punching the elevator call button. She was just on her way up to her quarters to see what she'd missed in the past few hours. She also wanted to see if the Illusive Man had sent the orders to Illium to her personal inbox. If he had, that meant that Miranda had been snooping. Again.

Sure enough, there was an "unread" message from the Illusive Man sitting in her inbox. Shepard started to feel angry, but realized that Lawson wasn't entirely in the wrong. After all, they weren't just going to drift around in space for a day and a half while waiting for Shepard to come to.

But that wasn't the only new message sitting in her inbox.

The second one, dated from only a few hours ago, was sent by none other than Kaidan Alenko.


	12. Chapter 12

**AN: **The final chapter! Thanks for reading and don't forget to write a review :) I will be posting a oneshot about the destruction of the Normandy, plus a direct sequel to this, titled "Fractured." So, enjoy this last chapter and stay tuned for more!

Twelve

Thane was surprised, pleasantly so, when he heard Shepard come through the door to the life support systems, where he spent most of his time. He stood to greet her, and discovered another pleasant surprise. She was wearing a navy blue tank top, and black running shorts that showed off her long, toned legs. Her black hair was pulled up into a ponytail, like it usually was.

"Is there anything you need?" he asked her. She hovered near the doorway. When her gaze met his, Thane saw that there was fire in her eyes.

"Yeah," she said. "Fight me."

He blinked at her. "That is a strange request."

She took a step closer and crossed her arms over her chest. Her lips were curved upwards, but there was still that dangerous look in her eye that put Thane on his toes. "C'mon, you don't think it would be fun?"

"Fun for you, perhaps, siha. Even a pyjak knows not to tread on the nest of the thresher maw," he replied. Thane had fought many battles with Shepard, and had found that standing at her side was preferable to standing against her. He'd never been on the receiving end of her attacks. He would've liked to keep it that way.

However, four words changed his mind. "Winner gets bragging rights."

A slow smile spread across his face. "Better to have tried and failed than never tried at all, is it not?"

"Couldn't have said it better myself."

The duel took place in the cargo hold, where there was the most room and least chance of destroying something vital. The two biotics cut loose, not holding back a single drop of energy. Thane couldn't remember the last time he'd fought so hard, been so involved in combat. Every move he made, Shepard was one step ahead of him, dodging his attacks and retaliating ferociously. Dark energy swirling, she knocked him back with wide, powerful blows. Surrounded in a glowing blue aura, she truly did look like one of the siha, warrior angels descended from the heavens to protect and destroy.

And she was kicking his ass.

When Miranda read the message from Staff Commander Kaidan Alenko, she had half a mind to delete it from Shepard's inbox, so she'd never have to read it. Of course, she would find out. Eventually. When that happened, no doubt she'd be furious. And a furious Commander Shepard was really not someone she'd like to encounter in a dark alley. Or any kind of alley.

So, though she desperately wanted to get rid of any trace of that Alenko character, she refrained from doing so.

Miranda left her desk to pace in front of her window. Should she contact the Illusive Man about Kaidan's message? Shepard had been more than clear on several occasions that Cerberus wasn't to interfere with her family, friends, or personal life, but this could affect the mission. At that moment, she was in the cargo hold taking it out on poor Thane. From what Miranda could tell from the vids, he was putting up one hell of a fight. Still, soon it would end, and Shepard would have no one to vent her anger at.

She could always try throwing Jack into the hold with her.

But even that would only prolong her aggression. Angry Shepard left the rest of them in a not happy place. She had to deal with this, ASAP.

Miranda wondered for a moment if she should go talk to Shepard herself. Tell her, woman to woman, that Kaidan was an ass, and that she shouldn't even bother replying to his message. But then Shepard would just accuse her of snooping, adding yet another thing to her list of things to be pissed about. But who else could she get to intervene?

There was a knock at her door. "Come in."

It was Kasumi. "Have I caught you at a bad time?"

Miranda hadn't realized that she'd been pressing her fingers into her temples, trying to massage away the headache that was growing there. It wasn't working. Her arms dropped to her sides. "No. Do you want to talk?"

Kasumi shrugged, clearing a space to sit on Miranda's crowded desk. Miranda scowled. She would have to check the room after the thief left to make sure she hadn't stolen anything valuable. "I'm just a little concerned about the crew. And what will happen to us once Shepard tears a hole in the hull."

Miranda sighed, moving away from the window and facing the thief. "Thane's down there with her. A little biotic sparring won't damage the ship, Kasumi."

"They're not fighting anymore. She's in my room, drinking like its her twenty-first birthday party. And from the stories I've heard? When you put Shepard and alcohol together... things will explode." Miranda had been through Shepard's file enough times to know that this wasn't a complete exaggeration. "And she's still all hung up on Kaidan..." Kasumi shuddered. "What a mess. Not something I'd like to get in the middle of."

"Maybe Chambers could talk her out of it," Miranda suggested, bouncing ideas off her fellow jumpsuit wearer. After all, it was part of Kelly's job to make sure that the crew was psychologically sound. Much as she resisted, that included Shepard.

"Hmmm," Kasumi said, drumming her gloved fingers over her chin. "Maybe not."

Miranda stifled a frown. "What about Gabby, down in engineering? They're friends, aren't they?"

"They've talked. Twice."

Miranda threw her hands up, flustered. "Then, who?"

"Garrus," Kasumi said simply. Miranda didn't know why she hadn't just gone ahead and said it outright. "She's known him the longest. He's the best one to help her forget Alenko, hands down," Kasumi said brightly.

At first, Kasumi wasn't sold on the idea of letting Lawson in on the plan to set up Garrus and the commander. But it was true that Miranda had an iron will: when she wanted something done, it usually got done one way or another. As long as it didn't contradict Shepard's decisions. And in this case, Kasumi was pretty sure it didn't.

Not that she would ever ask. If Shepard ever found out that they were interfering with her love life... she probably wouldn't be too happy.

"Garrus?" Miranda repeated. She mulled it over for a moment. It made sense. She saw how he and the commander were around each other. She wasn't blind, after all. But Miranda hadn't expected Shepard to be interested in an alien in that way. Still, Garrus was willing to work with Cerberus, which was more than she could say for Alenko. So, human or not, he was okay in her books. And that stunt he pulled with the grenade launcher? She had to admit: that was freaking awesome. Shepard could do a lot worse.

"All right. Whatever your little scheme is, count me in." Miranda wouldn't mind a distraction from all the work they had.

Kasumi looked shocked, putting a hand up to her mouth in mock-offended gasp. "Why, Lawson, what makes you think I have a scheme?" She laughed. "We just need to give Garrus a nudge in the right direction. I have a feeling he'll take it from there himself."

"Good. And Kasumi?" Miranda stopped the girl on her way out. "I'll take that holo pad back."

Kasumi entered the main battery soundlessly, to where Garrus was sleeping. She leaned up against the railing, watching him for a moment. Wearing black pants and one of those turian turtle neck shirts instead of his usual bulky armor, he looked kind of sweet and vulnerable. So unlike the big, tough soldier he was around the crew. It wasn't too hard to see why Shepard was attracted to him.

"Gaaaarruuuus," she cooed softly. To her surprise, he sat up immediately, reaching for his assault rifle.

"Are we under attack?" He was putting on his boots.

"No, no. Everything's fine." He ceased his flurry of movement. "Well... not everything."

Garrus set his assault rifle next to his bed. Kasumi seemed nice enough, but unless there was some sort of emergency, he didn't really see the need to talk to her. "Errr... what seems to be the problem?"

"It's Shepard."

Oh, no. He should've stayed with her in the comm room to make sure she was okay. What if she was reacting badly to the vids they'd showed her? But Garrus quickly dismissed that idea. Shepard had seen way too much to be shaken up over backstabbing mercenaries. "Is she sick?" The Somnex Four might have done damage much deeper than Dr. Chakwas or Mordin thought to look.

"No. She's... fighting with Thane."

Garrus's mandibles flared. Fighting how? Fists? Words? _Maybe she'll throw him out the airlock. _"Do I need to talk to him?" And by talking, he meant punching him in the face.

"I think it's Shepard you should talk to. She seemed sort of upset when she read a message from some guy. Aaah, what was his name?" Kasumi scratched her head. Garrus had a pretty good idea of who it was. "Brandon Gecko, maybe? Or was it Aiden?"

"Kaidan Alenko," Garrus said, kind of growly.

Kasumi snapped her fingers. "That was it! Kaidan. You know him?"

"Yeah. Long time ago."

"Hmm. Anyway, you know how she gets when she's angry. Kinda violent. Kinda scary. I thought maybe, since you know her the best, you'd be able to calm her down?"

Garrus stood up. "Sure."

"Great! At the moment, she's in my room. Surrounded by a lot of alcohol."

He didn't blame her for not wanting to go in there herself. Whenever Shepard was around heavy booze, things tended to explode. "I'll see what I can do."

"I owe ya!" Kasumi called as he went down the hall. When the door closed after him, she whispered, "Go get 'er, tiger."

Garrus ran into Thane on his way over to the observation deck. He was holding an ice pack to his head, after coming out of the med bay. Garrus gave him a questioning look.

"If you see Shepard, and she extends the invitation to duel..." Thane said, "decline."

Shepard was exactly where Kasumi said she would be. More than a few of the bottles closest to her were empty.

"I sincerely hope that's not ryncol you're drinking. You should really give your immune system a rest," Garrus said, indicating the drink in Shepard's hands.

She turned around and he felt like biting his tongue. She was wearing tight-fitting clothes, taking after the fashions of Miranda and Jacob. The skin of her arms and legs was shiny with a light coat of sweat. _Somehow, she manages to make sweaty look good. _

"It's lemonade."

"No, it's not. It's ryncol." The smell was overpowering.

"It's ryncol." She smiled at him. "Go on, Garrus. Pick your poison. We're off duty, and you sure as hell earned it." She wasn't in that scary, violent mood Kasumi claimed she was in. But the alcohol probably had something to do with that. No doubt that beating up Thane helped as well.

He poured himself some dark ale out of a bottle that was labelled "DEXTRO" in big, blocky letters. It wasn't completely full. Garrus realized with a smirk that the only other dextro being onboard the Normandy was Tali. He sat down at the bar, next to Shepard. He was hesitant to bring up Kaidan because she seemed to be in such good spirits, but he knew he'd have to get to it eventually. _Might as well tackle the eight-hundred pound elcor in the room while I'm still sober. _

"How are things with you and Alenko?" Garrus thought he remembered reading somewhere that biotics were more powerful under the influence of alcohol. He thought she looked a little bluer than usual, though that might just have been the the radiological effects of the ryncol, or the reflection of the starlight from the window on her glistening skin.

"Things? What things? There's no... things. Nothings," Shepard said. _Yep. Definitely drunk. _Though not as drunk as most people would be after downing a shot of ryncol. Actually, most people would be passed out on the floor or vomiting up their liquified intestines, but not Shepard. She held her liquor the best of anyone he knew. A brand new liver probably came in handy, too.

"Let's skip to the part where you tell me what's going on and I give you some mind-blowingly great advice, okay?"

Shepard set her luminescent green glass on the counter and strode over to the window, leaning her forehead against the glass as she turned to look at him. He remained seated on the bar stool.

"Alright, Garrus." Her speech was a little slurred. It wasn't too noticeable, though. "Kaidan messaged me. Says he's on Illium... and he wants to... talk."

Garrus gulped down his drink. _Tell him you won't see him. _He couldn't bring himself to say it. It was obvious by her reaction that she still had feelings for Alenko. Ignoring them wouldn't make them go away, Garrus knew that much. She needed to deal with them, and move on. But he wasn't sure that seeing him again was the best way to achieve that. To him, it sounded like Kaidan was looking for more than the reconciliation of their more-than-friendship.

"Do you want to see him?"

The question was simple enough, but Shepard had a hard time answering it. "Shit," she said. "I dunno. I mean, I thought we agreed to go our separate ways, and..." she went back to the counter and took a sip of ryncol. "And whatever. I was dealing with that, but this?" She sighed loudly, pacing back and forth in front the window restlessly. "What does he wanna talk about?" Suddenly, she raised her voice angrily. "What can he possibly say? He left me!" She smashed her glass into the window. The latter survived the impact, but the cup shattered into a thousand pieces.

"Hey." Garrus was on his feet, his arms around Shepard. She curved into him, her head fitting just under his chin. Her hair was soft and damp. She was shaking slightly. "You don't have to see him if you don't want to, but... I think you should just hear him out. There's no need to make promises, or apologies. You don't owe him anything. But maybe he thinks he owes you." Soothed by the deep tenor of his voice and his rhythmic breathing, Shepard became still.

In a way, Garrus felt sorry for Kaidan. He was forced to choose between his duty to the Alliance and the woman he loved. Garrus realized that if he were in Kaidan's position, as a good turian, he'd be expected to remain loyal to the military. But Garrus hadn't. He'd chosen Shepard over C-Sec, and he'd make the same choice again in a heartbeat. He belonged at her side, and saying otherwise would only be lying to himself. For Kaidan, the lines weren't as clear. The Alliance needed him, though he may have wanted to be with Shepard. His head and his heart were telling him two different things, and in the end, he picked logic over emotion. Who was Garrus to judge his decision? Maybe Kaidan had done what was right for him.

All Garrus knew that life without Shepard was hardly worth living. She was the only reason he needed.

She exhaled sharply. "I'll tell him that... that I'll see him."

"Okay." He ran his hand up her back, feeling the ridges in her spine. "Only if you want to. No pressure." She gave a soft, short laugh.

"Honestly, Garrus, I'm, ummm, not sure what I'd do without you," Shepard said. It didn't come out quite as she meant it, though. She tried again. "I'm glad that you're here. I really need you for this."

They were quiet for a while. Garrus stroked her hair, gently tugging at the ends. He rested his chin on top of her head and stared out the window, at the looming black infinity. It made him feel small and insignificant, but he knew where he was meant to be. In that moment, he knew: he belonged with Shepard. Wherever she led, he would follow. Even if she took him to the very edge of the void. Especially if she did. Because when she needed him most, he would make sure that he was there for her, no matter what the cost.

"Well, lucky for you I plan on sticking around for a while."

"Glad to hear it, Vakarian."

They gravitated back towards the booze after a minute or so.

"So," Garrus began, downing another ale. "What'd Thane do to piss you off?"

Shepard rolled her eyes, eyelashes fluttering. She was smirking. "He didn't piss me off. I was looking for a sparring partner."

"I'm offended you didn't come to me first," he replied.

She swished around the bottle of ryncol, then took a swig straight from it. _Gross, _Garrus thought. Then he remembered that the only one besides her that would drink that stuff was Grunt, and he probably wasn't worried about Shepard's mouth germs. "Well, you were asleep."

"I'm awake now."

Shepard set down the bottle, glancing at Garrus out of the corner of her eye. He was serious. "Really? You wanna go?"

"Hell yeah." If Thane had tried, so would he.

"Great. Let's take this outside," Shepard said, chugging another mouthful of ryncol before slamming the bottle down and hopping off her bar stool a little unsteadily.

Garrus did the same, polishing off the last bit of ale in his glass before getting to his feet, the room tilting to the side as he did so. He silently cursed Joker for not being able to keep the ship steady. Shepard held onto his arm for balance, apparently feeling the same way.

Once in the cargo hold, Garrus asked her, "So, how do you want to do this?"

Shepard strode out to the center of the open space, then spun on her heel. She was wearing a dangerous grin. "Like this."

That was all the warning he got before she turned biotic blue and charged him. Garrus barely dodged her, diving out of the way with a millimeter to spare.

Shepard managed to avoid colliding with the wall full force, cutting the burst of energy short and throwing her hands up to cushion her impact. Garrus didn't give her time to recover, attacking from behind before she could turn around. He put her in a headlock, pressing his elbow into her chest and neck instead of moving to cut off her air flow.

Her hands moved up to his arm as she tried to break the hold. But, as strong as she was, she couldn't do it. Garrus was simply stronger. Still, there were ways to get around that. She drove her heel onto his foot and threw her weight backwards. Unprepared for her attack, Garrus hit the ground, taking her with him. The sound of their impact resonated throughout the entire cargo hold. She rolled on top of his arm, escaping the headlock, but Garrus wasn't ready to give up the advantage yet. His arm shot across her shoulder, pinning her there for a moment. Shepard was impressed by his reach, but it wouldn't be enough to keep her down.

Garrus was only on top for a second. Her knees clamped down on the outside of his hips, flipping him onto the bottom and securing the top for herself. She pushed his upper arms into the ground. He was completely pinned.

Shepard was about to declare victory when Garrus broke the hold. His hands free, he grabbed her by the shoulders and forced her onto her back, using her own trick against her. He pressed one arm across her chest to lock both of her shoulders down, and used the other to hold her left hand. She squirmed, even though it was obvious to both of them that Garrus had won.

"You beat me," she said in disbelief. She smelled like sweat and clean laundry and shampoo. And ryncol. It was intoxicating.

He didn't release her. "Yeah," he said. "No hard feelings, right?" To prove his sincerity, he leaned down and pressed his mouth onto hers.

Shepard got over her initial surprise without much delay, quickly sinking into the delicious sensation of the kiss. The feel of his mouth was strange and exciting. While his upper lip was stiff and unyielding to her own, the bottom was softly textured, like suede. He moved his arm from her chest to the back of her neck, allowing her to breathe more easily. His heart jolted when her leg wrapped behind his back, partly because he thought she was going to try and flip him over again, but mostly because she pulled him closer, so that he was his hip bones were touching hers. Fingers still wound together, he shifted his weight onto his elbow so he didn't crush Shepard.

Then, it hit him: _I'm making out with my commander on the floor of the cargo hold_. They broke apart and looked at each other, her eyes the color of the sky before a dark storm, his the color of one afterwards. "Come upstairs with me," she whispered. She'd read his mind, as no one but her could.

He drank in the sight of her, beautiful and willing and for the moment, wholly and completely his. He nuzzled her cheek, the tips of his mandibles brushing against her face as he sighed, light and gentle like butterfly wings. "Okay," he said into her skin.

He pushed himself off the ground, holding her hand as he did so to help her up. All it took was one look in her eyes to undo him, driving him nearly mad with the desire to tackle her to the ground and resume that perfect, slightly salty, kiss. But he satisfied himself with holding her hand and planting a kiss on the top of her head.

Because in that one look, he'd said all he needed to. Shepard had a partner that would stand at her side, even if it meant toeing the edge of the void. Even if it meant dying. One look, and she knew that Garrus Vakarian would never leave her.


End file.
